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THE MINISTER AS 
SHEPHERD 



BY 



CHARLES EDWARD JEFFERSON 

Pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle 
in New York City 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



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Copyright, 1912, 
BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY. 



Published September, 1912. 



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THE GEORGE SHEPARD 

LECTURES ON PREACHING 

At Bangor Theological Seminary 

1912 



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CONTENTS 



PAGE 



THE SHEPHERD IDEA IN SCRIPTURE 
AND HISTORY . 



II 



THE 



SHEPHERD'S WORK • • .• *3 



III 



THE SHEPHERD'S OPPORTUNITY . . ** 



IV 



THE SHEPHERD'S TEMPTATIONS . 131 



THE SHEPHERD'S REWARD . . .178 



THE MINISTER AS SHEPHERD 



The Shepherd Idea in Scripture and History 

Of all the titles which have been minted 
for the envoys of the Son of God, that of 
"shepherd" is the most popular, the most 
beautiful, and the most ample. Bishop, 
presbyter, preacher, priest, clergyman, rec- 
tor, parson, minister, all of these have been 
long, and are still, in use, but not one of 
them is so satisfying or sufficient as 
"shepherd." 

11 Bishop " came into the church from the 
Gentile world, and was early set aside to 
designate a special grade of minister — thus 
losing the range of application which it 
formerly possessed. In the original sense 
of the word, bishop is one who oversees 
1 



2 The Minister as Shepherd 

and superintends, and the bead, therefore, 
of every congregation might be rightfully 
called a bishop. Such use of it under pres- 
ent conditions would be misleading. 

Presbyter came into the church through 
Judaism. Because fcioth the Jewish and 
Gentile worlds are reflected in our New 
Testament, presbyter and bishop stand 
side by side upon its pages. At the begin- 
ning, bishop and presbyter were synony- 
mous titles, belonging to one and the same 
official. In time, however, the bishops of 
the local church dropped the title " bishop," 
that name being borne thereafter solely by 
the heads of dioceses or districts. Presby- 
ter, the name retained by the head of the 
local congregation, carries on its face the 
idea of age. Only men of years could in 
% the Jewish church be elders. In the Chris- 
tian church age is not a prime qualifica- 
tion for office, or an essential possession 
of those who lead. The word "elder" does 
not emphasize that which is cardinal in 
Christian work; it calls attention to the 



In Scripture and History 3 

years a man has lived rather than to the 
work which he has been called to do. 

Priest is a title borrowed from both Juda- 
ism and Paganism, and around it ages of 
controversy have raged. It has always been 
contended by many that the idea of priest 
is foreign to the Christian religion, and 
that to call the head of a Christian church 
a priest is to introduce a conception which 
works mischief. It is significant that both 
Jesus and his apostles carefully eschew 
that word. Only sects or sections of the 
church of Christ to-day make use of it. 

Preacher is also a sectional title confined 
to those limited areas of the Christian 
world in which preaching is considered the 
chief if not the only heaven-ordained work 
of an ambassador of Christ. The use of 
such a title implies that the head of a 
church is preeminently a speaker, and that 
in the act of speaking he is performing the 
crowning function of his office. Clergy- 
man is a rather chilling name, fixing thej 
inind not on the man's personality, but on 



4 The Minister as Shepherd 

his office. Rector is to many a repellent 
title, magnifying as it does the idea of rul- 
ing, and carrying with it unpleasant remi- 
niscences of days of monarchy when eccle- 
siastical leaders of despotic temper lorded 
it in lofty manner over the saints of God. 

Parson, the favorite title of George Her- 
bert and of many others, has in our modern 
world taken on a somewhat depreciatory 
color. When men speak facetiously of the 
minister they usually call him " parson," 
with a familiar accent which patronizes 
and smiles. The word parson is really the 
word person, and in times when the repre- 
sentative of the church was the one august 
and imperial person in the parish, there 
was a fitness in the title which it has long 
since lost. In these democratic days when 
the minister has stepped down from off his 
pedestal, it is usually mock reverence which 
toys with the title "parson." Parson has 
become a sort of joke. 

Minister is, on the whole, a wider and 
more adequate title than any of the seven 



In Scripture and History 5 

already mentioned, but it has the disadvan- 
tage of being the same title by which the 
State names the highest of its officials. 
When one speaks of the " minister," it is 
impossible from that word alone for the 
hearer to decide whether it is a minister of 
the church or a minister of the government 
to whom reference is made. One of the 
limitations of the name is its ambiguity, 
and another is its failure to discriminate. 
It does not distinguish the leader from his 
followers. It does not draw a line between 
the general and his soldiers. It is a word 
which belongs to every follower of Jesus. 
Servantship is of the essence of the Chris- 
tian life. All Christians are ministers or 
servants. To speak of " the minister " is 
to imply that there is only one, whereas 
there ought to be as many as there are 
members of the church. One wonders 
sometimes whether the rank and file of 
our churches would not have been more 
zealous in ministering to one another and 
also to the community, if the name " min- 



6 The Minister as Shepherd 

ister" had not been monopolized by a single 
man. The exclusive use of the title seems 
to justify indolent church members in their 
habit of considering the pastor the only 
obligated worker in the parish. 

But when we come to "shepherd/' we 
reach a title without spot or wrinkle or any 
such thing. Here is a word which has 
come down through the centuries without 
loss of wealth of meaning and free from 
stain. It is the one title which is prized 
and reverenced in every fold of the great 
flock of Christ. In the Greek and Roman 
and Anglican communions, in the Luther- 
an, Reformed, and other great Christian 
bodies, Pastor is a name which gives no 
offense. Rome likes the word. Her priests 
in charge of churches are called " Pastors." 
The Church of England likes the word, 
she calls her rectors "Pastors/* Churches 
which usually call their leaders ministers 
and preachers, call them also " Pastors," 
unwilling to part with so glorious a name. 
Pastor is a word understood around the 



In Scripture and History 7 

world. In this ancient title the Church 
of Christ is beautifully united. Like the 
Lord's Prayer and the Ten Command- 
ments, it is a treasure which no company 
of Christian people is willing to let go. Di- 
visions have never laid their hands upon 
it. Many precious inheritances have been 
torn to pieces, but this remains unimpaired. 
When the time for the reunion of Chris- 
tendom arrives, and good men begin to ask 
what name shall be given to those servants 
of the Lord to whom is entrusted the guid- 
ance of the local congregations, who can 
doubt that the word to be agreed upon will 
be the very word which the Lord chose for 
himself when he said : " I am the Good 
Shepherd." 

One of the secrets of the fascination of 
" shepherd " as a title is that the word car- 
ries us straight to Christ himself. It asso- 
ciates us at once with him. So far as the 
New Testament tells us, Jesus never called 
himself a priest, or a preacher, or a rector, 
or a clergyman, or a bishop, or an elder, 



8 The Minister as Shepherd 

but he liked to think of himself as a shep- 
herd. The shepherd idea was often in his 
mind. When he looked out upon the 
crowds in Galilee, they reminded him of 
sheep without a shepherd. He told men 
repeatedly that he had been sent to gather 
and save the lost sheep of the House of 
Israel. He considered his followers all 
sheep, and looking into the distance, he saw 
other sheep which also were his own. 
" Other sheep I have which are not of this 
fold, them also I must bring, and they shall 
hear my voice; and they shall become one 
flock, one shepherd." When he thought of 
himself in the world to come seated on a 
throne with all the nations assembled be- 
fore him, even there he was still a shep- 
herd, doing things which shepherds do. 

Early in Hebrew history, the word shep- 
herd had passed into a metaphor. The lit- 
eral keeper of sheep was so prominent a 
character in those early days that he be- 
came a type of the highest servants of Je- 
hovah, a symbol for the expression of lofty 
ideals of service. Fragrant memories gath- 



In Scripture and History 9 

ered round the word, and men poured into 
it rare and precious meanings. A priest 
was called a shepherd, and so also was a 
prophet, and so also later on was a prince 
or king. Every man in exalted place, en- 
trusted with public responsibilities, was 
crowned with the title " shepherd. " So 
beautiful was the figure and so rich its con- 
tents, that by and by somebody dared to 
apply it even to God. Kings and princes, 
priests and prophets, here on earth were 
under-shepherds, and in the heavens there 
was a shepherd over all — Jehovah. A po- 
etic genius taught all his countrymen to 
sing : " The Lord is my shepherd, I shall 
not want." When the nation fell into diffi- 
culties and calamities overtook it, the saints 
cried out : " Give ear, O Shepherd of Is- 
rael, Thou that leadest Joseph like a flock." 
Before men dared to think of God as their 
Father, they called him their Shepherd. 
Divine shepherdhood was one of the steps 
in the shining stairway up which the world 
climbed to the idea of divine fatherhood. 
But while there was a good shepherd in 



10 The Minister as Shepherd 

the skies there was no good shepherd on 
the earth. All the shepherds of Israel, one 
after another, proved disappointing. They 
did not do their duty. They failed to feed 
the flock. They did not wisely guide it. 
They could not save it. But the Hebrew 
heart did not despair. It dared to dream 
of an ideal shepherd who would surely 
come. A Messiah had been promised, and 
he would be a shepherd. He would guide 
and feed and save the sheep. Through 
many generations this figure of the Shep- 
herd-Messiah flitted before the minds of the 
seers of Israel. They painted him in colors 
which at last burned themselves into the 
retina of the nation's eyes. When they 
painted pictures of bad shepherds, they al- 
ways hung up another picture, the picture 
of the shepherd who was good. When they 
wished to criticise an unworthy king or 
condemn an unfaithful priest, they com- 
pared him with the shepherd whom God 
had promised. It was this portrait of the 
good shepherd which sustained the nation's 



In Scripture and History 11 

heart. " He will feed his flock like a shep- 
herd. He will gather the lambs in his arms 
and carry them in his bosom, and will 
gently lead those that have their young." 
Thus did they contrast the Shepherd-Mes- 
siah with the shepherds who had been im- 
patient and selfish and cruel. It was to men 
whose eyes were filled with this lovely pic- 
ture and whose hearts were awed by this 
thrilling expectation, that Jesus spoke when 
he said : " I am the good shepherd. 
Thieves and robbers have preceded me, men 
who have done all the abominations which 
Ezekiel and Zechariah and others have 
narrated, but I am the good shepherd. I 
know every sheep by name. I give secu- 
rity and liberty and sustenance to all. I am 
going to lay down my life for the sheep." 
Jesus had many metaphors by which to 
image forth his character and his office, 
but the metaphor by which he loved best 
to paint his portrait was " shepherd." 

As he chose this title for himself, so also 
did he give it to the leader of the apostles. 



12 The Minister as Shepherd 

Peter was a fisherman, and could have 
best understood, presumably, the language 
native to a fisherman's lips, but Jesus in 
his final charge to the son of Jonas 
used only the vocabulary of the sheepfold. 
" Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed 
my sheep." In other words : "Bea shep- 
herd, and do a shepherd's work." The 
great shepherd of the sheep in framing a 
charge which he deemed sufficient for the 
guidance and encouragement of the leaders 
of the Christian church down to the end of 
time, used only a shepherd's speech. The 
history of the church begins with Jesus say- 
ing to the leader who is to head the work 
of discipling the nations: "I am a shep- 
herd, be thou a shepherd too." 

Peter never forgot what the Lord said to 
him that morning down on the shore of the 
sea. Like the Master he looked at men 
henceforth always with a shepherd's eyes. 
" Ye were going astray like sheep," he 
writes to a company of his converts, " but 
are now returned unto the shepherd and 



In Scripture and History 13 

bishop of your souls." It was the good 
shepherd who had found Peter, and who 
had given him his work. It is the good 
shepherd for whose return the apostle 
waits. The supreme shepherd is coming 
again, therefore Peter writes to the pas- 
tors of the churches : " Tend the flock of 
God which is among you. Make yourselves 
ensamples to the flock, and when the chief 
shepherd shall be manifested, ye shall re- 
ceive the crown of glory that fadeth not 
away." Peter did all of his work, not un- 
der a great taskmaster's eye, but under 
the gentle and loving glance of the shep- 
herd whose delight it is to seek and to save 
that which is lost. 

Paul was not one of the original twelve. 
He never knew Jesus in the flesh, but he 
received from him in the spirit the idea 
of shepherding. Paul, like Peter, loved to 
think of himself as a shepherd. He looked 
upon men with the loving solicitude and 
searching affection of a shepherd's eyes. 
Every parish was to him a fold, and the,, 



14 The Minister as Shepherd 

men in charge of the parish were shep- 
herds. He speaks to the officers of the 
church in Ephesus in the language of a 
shepherd : " Take heed unto yourselves, 
and to all the flock, to feed the church of 
the Lord which he purchased with his 
own blood. In all things I gave you an 
example." 

The shepherd idea, then, may be said to 
color the entire New Testament world, to 
permeate its atmosphere and to flow in its 
blood. The generation of Christians which 
was molded by the Apostles was trained to 
think of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and 
the church leaders instructed by Peter and 
Paul went forth as shepherds to feed and 
tend Christ's sheep. It is a ruling idea of 
the apostolic age which breaks into music 
in the fullest-toned of all our New Testa- 
ment benedictions : " Now the God of 
Peace, who brought again from the dead 
the great shepherd of the sheep with the 
blood of an eternal covenant, even our Lord 
Jesus, make you perfect in every good 



In Scripture and History 15 

thing to do his will, working in us that 
which is well pleasing in his sight, through 
Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and 
ever. Amen." This is the benediction 
which the New Testament pronounces over 
all Christian workers, and it has a special 
significance for men who are fitting them- 
selves for service in the Christian ministry. 
It is through the great shepherd of the 
sheep that God perfects men for the doing 
of his will. It is by building up in them a 
shepherd's disposition and imparting to 
them a shepherd's skill that he enables them 
to do that which is well pleasing in his 
sight. If the aim of our life is to be Christ- 
like, then we must be like a shepherd. If 
we are called to fulfil Christ's mission, then 
our work is that of a shepherd. If we are 
to be judged by Christ, then the standard 
of the judgment day is to be the standard 
of a shepherd. Since Christ is the image 
of his Father, it follows that God himself 
is a shepherd God. To glorify him we 
must do a shepherd's work, and to enjoy 



16 The Minister as Shepherd 

him forever we must have the shepherd 
heart. 

It is an interesting fact that when we 
close the New Testament and look about 
for books created by the subapostolic age, 
almost the first volume which comes to 
hand is a little treatise, a sort of Bunyan's 
" Pilgrim's Progress, " a book which almost 
won for itself a place in the canon of our 
New Testament, and which for a long time 
was read in Christian churches, quoted in 
Christian sermons, and expounded in Chris- 
tian books as though it were a part of 
authentic scripture — " The Shepherd of 
Hermas." It is a curious little pamphlet, 
and everybody is glad now that it did not 
succeed in establishing itself in our Bible. 
But it contains much that is suggestive, 
and one of its interesting features is that 
Hermas got his instruction and inspira- 
tion from a shepherd. The scholars tell us 
that in the oldest of the catacombs the fa- 
vorite Christian figure is that of a shepherd. 
He is in the bloom of youth, with a crook 



In Scripture and History 17 

or a shepherd's pipe in one hand, and on 
his shoulder a lamb which he carefully 
holds with the other hand. Sometimes he 
is attended by one sheep only, at other 
times by two. Often there are several 
sheep at his feet in various attitudes. It 
was a shepherd whom these early Chris- 
tians loved to paint on the walls of their 
chapels and oratories, and to chisel on the 
tombs of their dead. They engraved the 
image of the shepherd on the chalices 
which they used at the sacrament of the 
Last Supper. They traced it in gold on the 
glasses from which they drank at their 
feasts; they molded it on lamps, carved it 
on rings, painted it in frescoes upon the 
walls of the chambers of death, carved it 
on tablets, sculptured it on sarcophagi. It 
is found on thousands of tombs. It was 
the first favorite symbol of Christian life 
and faith. In this way we become certain 
what the second-century Christians thought 
of Jesus. This figure of the shepherd re- 
veals how they regarded him in their deep- 



18 The Minister as Shepherd 

est experiences, in what form he comforted 
them in their most solemn hours. It was 
the tenderness of the shepherd which 
soothed them when their hearts were bleed- 
ing. It was the shepherd's courage and 
strength which braced them in the day 
of persecution and in the hour of death. 
Christianity was at first the religion of the 
good shepherd. To the men of the second 
century the Saviour of the world was a 
keeper of sheep. As Dean Stanley says, 
" The kindness, the courage, the grace, the 
love, the beauty of the good shepherd was 
to them prayer book and articles, creed and 
canons, all in one. They looked on that 
figure and it conveyed to them all that they 
wanted. As ages passed on, the good shep- 
herd faded away from the mind of the 
Christian world, and other emblems of the 
Christian faith have taken his place. In- 
stead of the gracious and gentle pastor, 
there came the omnipotent Judge, or the 
crucified Sufferer, or the infant in his 
mother's arms, or the Master in his part- 



In Scripture and History 19 

ing supper, or the figures of innumerable 
saints and angels, or the elaborate exposi- 
tions of the various forms of theological 
controversy. There is hardly any allusion 
to the good shepherd in Athanasius or in 
Jerome. There is hardly any in the Sum- 
ma Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, none 
in the Tridentine catechism, none in the 
Thirty-nine Articles, none in the West- 
minster Confession." 

When church leaders began to lose the 
vision of the good shepherd, they at the 
same time began to drift away from the 
New Testament ideal of ministerial serv- 
ice. Little by little they magnified their 
office in ways not sanctioned by the 
good shepherd of the sheep. They became 
priests offering a bloodless sacrifice, they 
assumed the functions of rulers, making a 
specialty of law and discipline. They de- 
generated into tyrants, setting themselves 
up as sole custodians of the grace of God, 
claiming sovereignty not only over the 
kingdoms of this world, but also over the 



20 The Minister as Shepherd 

vast empire of the dead. The church lost 
the way which leads to life as soon as the 
envoys of the Son of God forgot that they 
were shepherds. Darkness fell upon the 
earth when the shepherd was swallowed up 
in the priest. 

But an ideal, once apprehended, never 
fades completely from the mind of the 
world. The church has never surrendered 
entirely her belief in Jesus as the Shepherd 
Saviour, and has never given up altogether 
her feeling that ministers ought to be shep- 
herds of the sheep. The shepherd idea 
has something in it which appeals to the 
universal heart. Even in our western 
world from which machinery and commerce 
have driven the shepherd and his flock, the 
best-loved of all the Psalms remains the 
Shepherd Psalm. More men and women 
read and cherish " The Lord is my shep- 
herd, I shall not want," than any other 
poem in the Psalter. Millions who have 
had no experience with sheepfolds, and to 
whom a sheep has been an animal almost 



In Scripture and History 21 

unknown, have been strangely moved by 
the piercing pathos of the story which 
Jesus told of a shepherd who went out in 
search of one sheep that was lost. What 
Christian song went deeper into the heart 
of the nineteenth century than " There were 
ninety and nine that safely lay in the shel- 
ter of the fold" as sung by Mr. Sankey 
round the world. Congregations every 
Sunday sing : 

" Saviour, like a shepherd lead us, 
Much we need thy tender care ; 
In thy pleasant pastures feed us ; 
For our use thy folds prepare, " — 

and also this : 

" In tenderness he sought me, 
Weary and weak with sin ; 
And on his shoulders brought me 
Back to his fold again, " — 

and also this : 

" The King of love my Shepherd is, 
Whose goodness f aileth never ; 
I nothing lack if I am his 
And he is mine forever." 



22 The Minister as Shepherd 

Into the prayers as well as the hymnol- 
ogy, the shepherd idea has been inextri- 
cably woven. Multitudes of hearts find 
relief in making the confession : " We 
have erred and strayed from thy ways like 
lost sheep. We have followed too much 
the devices and desires of our own hearts." 
The devout heart drops unconsciously into 
such phrases as " All we like sheep have 
gone astray: we have turned every one to 
his own way, and Jehovah hath laid on him 
the iniquity of us all." The spirit in us, % 
helping our infirmities, teaches us to cry 
out : " O thou great shepherd of the sheep ! 
Guide us, feed us, save us ever more ! " 

It is necessary only to walk through any 
of the great European picture galleries to 
see what an impression the shepherd idea 
has made on the mind of the artist. Mas- 
ters of the brush have ever loved to paint 
Jesus as a shepherd. Wherever that pic- 
ture is displayed, human eyes are attracted 
by it and human hearts are ministered 
unto. The heart of a man is like the heart 



In Scripture and History 23 

of a sheep, it beats at the sight of a 
shepherd. 

The shepherd idea has worked its way 
deep into Christian literature. It has 
molded, more than we think, not only the 
language but the thought of the Christian 
church. Do we not speak of the pas- 
toral epistles? and have we not in every 
Theological Seminary a Chair of Pastoral 
Theology ? and do we not have at our ordi- 
nations pastoral charges? Is not one of 
the most famous of all recent Encyclicals 
of the Pope entitled, " The Feeding of the 
Flock,"? The shepherd conception haunts 
us, clings to us, will not let us go. This is the 
Lord's doing, and it ought to be marvelous 
in our eyes. Blessed is the man who pon- 
ders its significance and allows it to teach 
him what it has to tell. We lose something 
by confining the Anglo-Saxon word " shep- 
herd " to the fields, and shutting up the 
Latin word " pastor " in the church. We 
know with our intellect that the two words 
are synonymous, but we forget it often with 



24 The Minister as Shepherd 

our hearts. It would help us to say oc- 
casionally, " The Lord is my pastor. " It 
would lift the word " pastor n to higher 
dignity, and pour into it a more heavenly 
meaning. It would chasten and strengthen 
every minister of Christ if now and then he 
would say to himself, " I am a shepherd. 
My work is the herding and feeding of 
sheep." Self-condemnation would come to 
more than one pastor if his people should 
begin, some day, to speak of him as " Our 
shepherd." 

There is danger in a time like this that 
the shepherd conception may become ob- 
scured. Just as the shepherd idea was 
swallowed up in the priest idea, causing a 
blight to fall upon the church, so a calamity 
of another sort is sure to overtake us if the 
shepherd idea is swallowed up in the 
preacher idea. A Roman Catholic boy in- 
tended for the priesthood is always looking 
forward to the time when he can officiate at 
the mass. The day on which he celebrates 
his first mass is a red letter day in his life. 



In Scripture and History 25 

A Catholic boy thinks that the chief work 
of a minister of Christ is to perform a 
ceremony — offering up to God a wafer 
which has become in some inexplicable way 
the body of God's Son. That false idea 
demoralizes and darkens the entire Roman 
Catholic world. The Protestant boy in- 
tending to enter the ministry looks for- 
ward to the day when he will preach his 
first sermon. The date of the event is a 
cardinal day in his calendar. Protestant 
ministers to the end of their life talk about 
their first sermon, just as Roman Catholic 
priests talk to the final sunset about their 
first mass. Both men are alike in putting % 
the supreme emphasis on a public perform- 
ance, the one on a ceremony, the other on a I 
discourse. The one makes the altar, the 
other makes the pulpit, the holy of holies 
of the Christian church. The one thinks the 
world is blessed by converting the wafer 
into the body of Christ, the other that hu- 
manity is advanced by his exposition of the 
life and ideas of Jesus. Both are mistaken. 



26 The Minister as Shepherd 

The New Testament knows neither the al- 
tar nor the pulpit. The first elders and 
bishops were not preachers in our sense of 
that word, and it was not for generations 
that the Lord's Supper was converted into 
the mass. The first permanent officials of 
the local congregations in the days of the 
apostles were overseers, superintendents, 
guides, presbyters, bishops, — in other words, 
pastors, herders of the sheep. The pas- 
toral idea is deeper than the priest idea, or 
the preacher idea, and it is also wider. Its 
contents are richer. Priests and preachers 
impoverish their lives and curtail their use- 
fulness, when they fail to keep alive in 
their hearts the shepherd idea. 

The pastoral notion is disparaged, not 
only by many ministers, but also by most 
of our churches. Our Protestant churches 
look, first of all, for what they call a 
preacher, a man who is an expert speaker 
and who can draw and hold a company of 
listeners. Who ever heard of a man being 
called to a church because he was a good 



In Scripture and History 27 

shepherd! The popular estimate of pas- 
toral service comes out also in the policy 
adopted by the church in doing its work. 
No man can be the pastor of more than a 
few hundred people, and yet churches roll 
up their membership sometimes to a thou- 
sand, while one man is expected to go on 
doing all the work of the parish. The re- 
sult is he can do nothing well. He is a 
failure as a pastor, and soon or late he 
breaks down as a preacher. Every city 
church of a thousand members ought to 
have a staff of pastors, and each one ought 
to do the thing he can do the best. We 
ought to utilize in the ministry men of the 
most diverse endowments. We impoverish 
our church life by limiting the ministry 
practically to men of a single type. Nearly 
all our city churches are run on the old 
village plan: one man is supposed to do 
everything. No wonder they do not cope 
successfully with city problems. A village 
church in a city environment is impotent. 
Men and money are being squandered in a 



28 The Minister as Shepherd 

senseless effort to do the impossible. What 
our city churches need more than all things 
else is pastors. A city church like a city 
hospital or a city school is an expensive in- 
stitution and laymen must be educated to 
pour their money into it with a generosity 
hitherto unknown. It is because Christian 
laymen as a rule do not know the value of 
pastoral service that most of our city 
churches are to-day fighting a losing battle. 
When at last the membership becomes 
unwieldy, and the pastor is seen to stagger 
under his load, and in sheer desperation 
the church decides to obtain the services of 
a second worker, who is that second worker 
likely to be? Some young man, perhaps, 
just out of the seminary, who is willing to 
work for his clothes and board, or some 
aged saint whose waning vitality has closed 
to him every other door. For the pulpit, 
everybody is certain that a man must have 
brains, talent, genius, but for pastoral serv- 
ice it is a common impression that almost 
any man is sufficient. The churches show 



In Scripture and History 29 

their estimate of pastoral service by the 
policy they pursue in securing it. 

The Schools of Theology have been in 
some measure responsible for the igno- 
rance of the churches. A glance at the cur- 
riculum of the old-fashioned seminary is 
sufficient to show that pastoral theology was 
in the judgment of the doctors a subordi- 
nate branch of knowledge. Greek and 
Hebrew, comparative religion, the confes- 
sions and creeds, sacred rhetoric and elocu- 
tion, homiletics in all of its branches, sys- 
tems of theology — surely these have had 
the uppermost seats at the theological 
feasts, and young men have been trained 
not to scoff at pastoral work, but to place 
it in a subordinate rank. Spiritual ther- 
apeutics, casuistry or cases of conscience, 
the cure of souls, the remedies provided in 
the Christian pharmacopoeia, the applica- 
tion of Christian principles to specific ail- 
ments of the individual heart, surely these 
are studies which have received less than 
their deserts. Then again the science of 



30 The Minister as Shepherd 

sociology, the art of cooperation, the phil- 
osophy of fellowship, all of those knowl- 
edges and disciplines involving social life 
and communal action, have been too often 
slighted, if not completely ignored. Many 
a seminary graduate floundering amidst the 
complicated forces of his first parish has 
cried out in humiliation and anger : " Why 
did they not teach me in the seminary how 
to organize my work and how to grapple 
with all this mass of tangled and critical 
problems for whose solution I am totally 
unprepared ! " 

One result of this disparagement of pas- 
toral service is visible in the sentiments en- 
tertained by many young men entering the 
ministry. They say quite openly that they 
despise pastoral work. Study they enjoy, 
books they love, preaching they revel in. 
But as for shepherding the sheep, their soul 
hates it. They like to feel that they have 
special gifts for the pulpit. When their 
friends prophesy for them a glorious pulpit 
career, their heart sings. The work of the 



In Scripture and History 31 

shepherd was an abomination, we are told, 
to the ancient Egyptians, and so it is to all 
pulpit Pharaohs who are interested in build- 
ing pyramids out of eloquent words. The 
fear of breaking down in a sermon weighs 
like a nightmare on them, the fear of break- 
ing down in pastoral duty is never once be- 
fore their eyes. A slip in the pulpit brings 
gnawing remorse, a blunder in pastoral 
work gives the conscience not a twinge. 
Public worship is to them the be-all and 
the end-all of ministerial life. They have 
not read the New Testament sufficiently to 
observe that public worship is not made the 
one thing needful either by Jesus or the 
apostles, and that while it is not to be neg- 
lected there are many weightier matters 
of the law. 

In defense of young men who look 
askance at pastoral work it may be said that 
youth is the time when the intellect is vora- 
cious for ideas, and when God intends men 
to furnish their mind. Young men are, if 
intellectually alert, interested more in ideas 



32 The Minister as Shepherd 

than in men. Moreover the gift of speech 
is a gift early developed, and the love of 
speaking is one of the delights of youth. 
Shepherding sheep, one at a time, cannot 
be expected to be so fascinating to young 
men as blowing a thrilling message through 
a silver trumpet in the ears of a crowd on 
the Lord's Day. Moreover, young ministers 
have the peculiar frailties which are in- 
separable from youth. They like com- 
mendation. They are sensitive to applause. 
They are fond of the limelight — how can 
they help it? They are encouraged by at- 
tention in the public press. Papers are 
everywhere, and their contents are dis- 
cussed in every circle. To get into the pa- 
pers, therefore, is one way for a minister 
to multiply his power. And to get into the 
papers a man must preach. He can say 
things in the pulpit which the reporters will 
be glad to print. He can accomplish things 
from the pulpit which the world needs to 
have done. Young men are rightfully am- 
bitious to make their lives count for 
the most possible. They are commendably 



In Scripture and History 33 

eager to gain attention to their message. 
The pulpit is a sort of housetop from which 
they can shout their tidings to all the town. 
In pastoral work a man is on the ground, 
and the world is not likely to pay atten- 
tion to him. Again, youth is naturally im- 
patient. It wants things done, and it wants 
them done at once. To deal with men one 
at a time is tedious and exhausting. To 
coax one bad boy into obedience to his 
mother, or to lift one slave of drink into 
sobriety and freedom, or to brighten one 
humble household with a smile and a pray- 
er — this requires patience and tact and sac- 
rifice, and it seems puttering work com- 
pared with making a great hit with a crowd 
of people all at once on the Lord's Day. 
Youth longs to do things in haste, and for 
this we should not be sorry. It is the glory 
of a young man that he wants to move fast, 
and that he is not so patient with things as 
they are, as an old man is. It is a certain 
burning swiftness of the blood which makes 
many a young man averse to pastoral work. 
There are certain gifts and graces which 



34 The Minister as Shepherd 

like the oak mature but slowly. One of these 
is sympathy. Sympathy is the outgrowth 
of experience. The experience of young 
men is limited, and for this they are not 
to blame. Many a young man has been 
sorely troubled on entering his first parish 
because of his feeble love for people. On 
examining his heart he has found it cold 
and dead. He has looked at the men and 
women before him and confessed to him- 
self that for most of them he does not 
care. There seems to be no point of con- 
tact between him and them. He has been 
studying and they have simply been ex- 
isting. They know hardly anything, he 
knows a lot. He has been thinking, they 
do not seem to have thought at all. He is 
quite familiar with all the great thinkers of 
Germany and of England and Scotland, 
but in his parish these kings of modern 
thought are quite unknown. The very 
wisest of his people do «not know what 
Ritschlianism is, or Pragmatism, or Vital- 
ism, or Monism, or Modernism, or any- 



In Scripture and History 35 

thing else worth the attention of the mod- 
ern man. The men in his parish are simply 
buying and selling, working and playing. 
The women are keeping house and fulfill- 
ing various social functions. The world is 
eating and drinking, marrying and giving 
in marriage, very much as it did before the 
flood. How is it possible for a young man 
reared in the world of books to take a 
hearty and genuine interest at once in a 
world so stupid and belated? It is by no 
means easy for a young man to become a 
shepherd, and he ought not to be discour- 
aged if he cannot become one in a day, or 
a year. An orator he can be without dif- 
ficulty. A reformer he can become at once. 
In criticism of politics and society he can 
do a flourishing business the first Sunday. 
But a shepherd he can become only slowly, 
and by patiently traveling the way of the 
cross. 

The shepherd's work is a humble work ; ^ 
such it has been from the beginning and 
such it must be to the end. A man must 



36 The Minister as Shepherd 

come down to do it. A shepherd cannot 
shine. He cannot cut a figure. His work 
must be done in obscurity. The things 
which he does do not make interesting copy. 
His work calls for continuous self-efface- 
ment. It is a form of service which eats 
up a man's life. It makes a man old be- 
fore his time. Every good shepherd lays 
down his life for the sheep. If a man is 
dependent on the applause of the crowd, he 
ought never to enter the ministry. The 
finest things a minister does are done out of 
% sight, and never get reported. They are 
V known to himself and one or two others, 
and to God. His joy is not that his success 
is being talked about on earth, but that his 
name is written in heaven. The shepherd 
in the Orient had no crowd to admire him. 
He lived alone with the sheep and the 
stars. His satisfactions were from within. 
The messengers of Christ must not expect 
bands of music to attend them on their way. 
Theirs is humble, unpretentious, and often- 
times unnoticed labor, but if it builds souls 



In Scripture and History 37 

in righteousness it is more lasting than the 
stars. 

How, then, can a young man with limited 
experience, undeveloped sympathies, an im- 
patient temper, a longing for attention, a 
love of self-expression, and a passion for 
ideas become a true shepherd of his people ? 
First of all let him study afresh the life 
of the ideal shepherd, and then let him 
day by day, both by prayer and self-sacri- 
ficing deeds, endeavor to build up in him- 
self the mind of Christ. " Pains and pray- 
ers through Jesus Christ can accomplish 
anything," as John Eliot wrote long ago. 
Jesus was a young man, but he had the 
shepherd heart. Nearness to him is the 
indispensable condition of absorbing the 
shepherd temper and learning the shepherd 
ways. 

A careful student of the New Testament 
does not fail to note how careful the evan- 
gelists are to state the scope of Jesus' work 
and the range of the duties which he lays 
upon the twelve. Luke tells us that in his 



38 The Minister as Shepherd 

first sermon in Nazareth Jesus accepted the 
program laid down by Isaiah, and this pro- 
gram was to preach good tidings to the 
poor and proclaim release to the captives, 
and recovering the sight to the blind, to set 
at liberty them that are bruised, and to pro- 
claim the acceptable year of the Lord. 
Speech and action are combined. The Mes- 
siah is both to teach and to do. Luke never 
loses sight of this twofold work. He tells 
Theophilus that his gospel is the story of 
what Jesus began both to do and to teach 
until the day on which he was received up. 
He says that to the twelve Jesus gave a 
twofold work. He called the twelve to- 
gether and gave them power and authority 
over all demons and to cure diseases, and 
he sent them forth to preach the kingdom 
of God and to heal the sick. The twelve 
understood that they were to do more than 
preach. They departed and went through- 
out the villages preaching the gospel and 
healing everywhere. In our oldest gospel, 
Mark, the same distinction is made clear. 
" He appointed twelve that they might be 



In Scripture and History 39 

with him, and that he might send them 
forth to preach and to have authority to 
cast out demons." This was the work 
which he himself had been doing. He went 
into their synagogues throughout all Gali- 
lee, " preaching and casting out demons." 
Matthew maintains the same distinction. 
' c Jesus went about all the cities and the 
villages teaching in their synagogues and 
preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and 
healing all manner of diseases, and all man- 
ner of sickness." It was when Jesus saw 
the multitudes distressed and scattered as 
sheep not having a shepherd that " he 
called unto him his twelve disciples, and 
gave them authority over unclean spirits, 
to cast them out, and to heal all manner of 
disease and all manner of sickness." In 
other words, the twelve were not simply 
to proclaim in general phrases a message 
for the crowd, they were to preach and 
they were to deal with men, one by one, 
casting out their evil spirits and healing 
their diseases. 

If, then, we are the successors of the 



40 The Minister as Shepherd 

apostles, we must have the apostolic spirit 
and do the apostles' work. We must shep- 
herd the multitudes which are distressed 
and scattered, and bring the life and love 
of God by our own spirit-filled personality 
into the mind and heart of the individual. 
It is only by pastoral work that the world 
can be saved. 

Without pastoral work the minister him- 
self cannot be saved. If salvation is health, 
and health is the kind of life which we find 
in Jesus of Nazareth, then how can a min- 
ister be in sound health who lacks the shep- 
herd heart, and how can he have peace 
and joy if he shirks the shepherd's respon- 
sibilities and runs away from the shep- 
herd's crosses? The finest test of the con- 
secration of a minister of Christ is not in 
his public performances, but in what he 
does when the world is not looking. It is 
hard for a man to tell when he is preach- 
ing, whether he is preaching for himself 
or for God. To open up glorious ideas, to 
clothe them with language which glows, 



In Scripture and History 41 

and speak them in tones which burn, all 
this is so delightful that it is not easy for 
the preacher to say just why he likes to do 
it. But in the obscurity of pastoral serv- 
ice he has opportunity to ascertain whether 
he really loves God and how much he is 
willing to do for people simply for Jesus' 
sake. 

A minister can scamp his pastoral work 
and still retain his position as the shepherd 
of the flock, but he cannot retain his posi- 
tion in God's kingdom. The unfaithful 
shepherd is punished by a penalty auto- 
matically inflicted and unescapable. Little 
by little his conscience is deadened, the 
heart becomes less sensitive, the spiritual 
eye loses its keenness, and the culprit, still 
outwardly devout and publicly honored, is 
pushed slowly but inexorably by the hand 
of the Almighty into deeper depths of that 
outer darkness prepared for all who are 
recreant to their trust. Men shirk pastoral 
service not because they are strong, but be- 
cause they are weak. They have not suffl- 



42 The Minister as Shepherd 

cient strength to bend their life to the life 
of Christ. It is the weaklings and not the 
giants who neglect their people. It is the 
Pagan and not the Christian who shines in 
public and leaves undone the private duties 
which belong to him as an ordained stew- 
ard of the Son of God. When a man says, 
I hate pastoral work, and do as little of it 
as I can — if he had ears to hear, he could 
hear the Spirit saying : " Thou fool ! " 

A few things are certain. We live in a 
universe created by a Shepherd God. The 
Lord is our shepherd. Our world is re- 
deemed by a Shepherd Saviour. Our elder 
brother is a shepherd. The man whom 
humanity most needs is a shepherd. Every 
messenger of Christ is sent to do a shep- 
herd's work. We are to stand at last be- 
fore a shepherd Judge. God is going to 
separate the good shepherds from the shep- 
herds who are bad. The questions which 
every pastor must meet and answer are 
three : " Did you feed my lambs ? Did 
you tend my sheep? Did you feed my 
sheep ? " 



II 

The Shepherd's Work 

One reason why pastoral work is fre- 
quently disparaged is because the concep- 
tion of it has been unwarrantably nar- 
rowed. By robbing it of breadth, it is easy 
to make it look insignificant. Pastoral dig- 
nity is inevitably lowered by every curtail- 
ment of the range of pastoral responsi- 
bility. What is pastoral work ? A common 
answer is that it is presiding at marriages 
and also at funerals. It is baptizing babies, 
and saying a kind word to strangers. It is 
comforting the sick, and helping the poor. 
He who does these things faithfully is a 
good pastor. Such is the popular concep- 
tion. But if this is the bulk of pastoral 
work, how meager it is, and how easily it 
might all be done by laymen. If to these 
six universally recognized pastoral func- 
43 



44 The Minister as Shepherd 

tions there be added the task of systematic 
pastoral visitation, such as is expected 
in many Protestant parishes, the rounded 
whole of a pastor's work is supposed to be 
set forth. But concerning the utility of this 
pastoral visitation there is widespread 
skepticism, and against it there is constant 
revolt. Who has not heard scornful things 
said about the foolishness of wasting time 
in ringing door-bells and filling up the after- 
noon with a round of social calls which 
exhaust the minister and add nothing to 
the spiritual welfare of his people? By 
some the work of pastoral visitation is 
counted easy. Preaching, of course, is 
labor, but pastoral calling is recreation — 
a sort of ministerial play. To others it is 
not play, but tribulation — an exhausting 
drudgery, a cruel infliction visited on help- 
less ministers, sanctioned by tradition but 
not included in the plan of God. It is be- 
cause men do not see clearly what pastoral 
service really is that such service is often 
scorned and slighted. A few items of 



The Shepherd's Work 45 

parochial administration are seized upon 
and made the sum total of the pastor's 
labor. Anything becomes contemptible if 
you whittle it down to a splinter. The 
seven functions above referred to are only 
minor fractions of a pastor's toil. 

Pastoral work does not appeal to a large 
and noble mind until it is seen in its en- 
tirety, and until the wealth of its oppor- 
tunity and the manifoldness of its respon- 
sibility are clearly apprehended. To find 
out the scope of pastoral service, we must 
go to the Orient where our shepherd meta- 
phor was born, and ascertain what was in 
Palestine a shepherd's work. Jesus was 
an oriental. He spoke to orientals. He 
thought in the terms familiar to the oriental 
mind. He belonged to a nation whose 
wealth was largely in sheep, and over the 
fields of whose history there came con- 
stantly the lowing of cattle and the bleat- 
ing of lambs. Some of the greatest of the 
Hebrew heroes had been keepers of sheep. 
All of the patriarchs, the greatest of the 



46 The Minister as Shepherd 

lawgivers, the sweetest of the poets, and 
some of the mightiest of the prophets had 
in early life been shepherds. To Hebrew 
eyes the work of shepherding had a glory 
invisible to our eyes. In Palestine, and in 
the countries round about, a shepherd's 
work was by no means simple or easy. It 
was arduous and manifold. It called into 
exercise varied faculties, it gave scope for 
the exhibition of the loftiest virtues. It 
taxed the higher range of talents and de- 
veloped the noblest qualities of the soul. 
By glancing at the range of the shepherd's 
duties we shall be able to comprehend what 
pastoral service meant to Jesus, why he 
phrased his charge to the chief of the 
apostles in the vocabulary of the sheep- 
fold, and how it came to pass that the 
title chosen by him for himself was 
" Shepherd." 

I. The Eastern shepherd was, first of all, 
a watchman. He had a watch-tower. It was 
his business to keep a wide-open eye, con- 
stantly searching the horizon for the pos- 



The Shepherd's Work 47 

sible approach of foes. He was bound to 
be circumspect and attentive. Vigilance 
was a cardinal virtue. An alert wakeful- 
ness was for him a necessity. He could 
not indulge in fits of drowsiness, for the 
foe was always near. Only by his alert- 
ness could the enemy be circumvented. 
There were many kinds of enemies, all of 
them terrible, each in a different way. At 
certain seasons of the year there were 
floods. Streams became quickly swollen 
and overflowed their banks. Swift action 
was necessary in order to escape destruc- 
tion. There were enemies of a more sub- 
tle kind — animals, rapacious and treach- 
erous, lions, bears, hyenas, jackals, wolves. 
There were enemies in the air, huge birds 
of prey were always soaring aloft ready to 
swoop down upon a lamb or kid. And 
then most dangerous of all were the human 
birds and beasts of prey — robbers, bandits, 
men who made a business of robbing 
sheepfolds and murdering shepherds. That 
Eastern world was full of perils. It teemed 



48 The Minister as Shepherd 

with forces hostile to the shepherd and his 
flock. When Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and 
Habakkuk talk about shepherds, they call 
them watchmen set to warn and save. 

The first great pastor of the Christian 
church, Paul, in his farewell address to the 
officers of the church in Ephesus, empha- 
sizes the importance of the work of watch- 
ing. His closing exhortation is " Watch! " 
He gives these men a reason for his warn- 
ing. Grievous wolves, he says, are going to 
enter in among them, not sparing the flock. 
And moreover from among their own 
selves men are going to arise, speaking 
perverse things and drawing away many 
after them. There are two quarters from 
which enemies are always to be expected: 
from the outside and also from the inside, 
from the world and also from the church. 
Not only will there be wolves in wolves' 
clothing but there will also be wolves in 
sheep's clothing, and against both types of 
wolf the Christian minister must be ever 
on his guard. The apostle goes on to re- 



The Shepherd's Work 49 

mind his converts of the example he had 
set them, saying, " Remember that for the 
space of three years I ceased not to admon- 
ish every one night and day with tears." 
Watchfulness is one of the marks of the 
good shepherd. The writer to the Hebrews 
describes church officials thus : " They 
watch in the interest of your souls." They 
are going to render an account to the great 
shepherd, and therefore they are intent 
upon your safety. They watch with eyes 
that do not sleep. 

How often the word " watch " was on 
the lips of Jesus may be inferred from its 
frequency on the pages of the gospels. To 
Jesus life is critical — the soul is ever in the 
midst of perils. The journey from the 
cradle to the grave is hazardous. Men are 
to pray and to watch. Now, if every man 
is surrounded by perils, if the universe is 
alive with forces hostile to the soul, then 
watchfulness becomes one of the most 
critical of all the pastor's responsibilities, 
for to him precious lives are committed, 



50 The Minister as Shepherd 

lives for which he is to render an account. 
Watching, surveying, scanning the horizon, 
peering into the darkness of days not yet 
born, spying out the interior nature of 
forces which are working like insidious and 
poisonous leavens, calculating the advent of 
storms asleep as yet in the caves of coming 
days — all this is pastoral work, work which, 
alas, is not always conscientiously per- 
formed. Many a minister fails as a pastor 
because he is not vigilant. He allows his 
church to be torn to pieces because he is 
half asleep. He took it for granted that 
there were no wolves, no birds of prey, no 
robbers, and while he was drowsing the 
enemy arrived. False ideas, destructive in- 
terpretations, demoralizing teachings came 
into his parish, and he never knew it. He 
was interested, perhaps, in literary re- 
search; he was absorbed in the discussion 
contained in the last theological quarterly, 
and did not know what his young people 
were reading, or what strange ideas had 
been lodged in the heads of a group of his 
leading members. There are errors which 



The Shepherd's Work 51 

are as fierce as wolves and pitiless as hye- 
nas, they tear faith and hope and love to 
pieces and leave churches once prosperous 
mangled and half dead. Or it may be that 
new conceptions of God and the world 
were rising like blazing suns in the firma- 
ment of the world of thought, and the 
minds of the followers of Jesus were 
agitated and perplexed. Instruction was 
needed to prepare men to accept changed 
ideas of the Scriptures, of inspiration, and 
of authority, and the watchman was look- 
ing in the other direction. He was study- 
ing the past, he was wedded to the antique, 
he was a devotee at the altars of the pre- 
ceding generation. He did not see that the 
old order was changing, giving way to new. 
And because he did not know what was 
going on in the world and in his parish, the 
faith of noble saints of God was shaken 
and the peace of many hearts destroyed. 
Watching is one of the chief forms of 
pastoral service. A pastor is a watchman. 
His home is in a tower. 

II. A shepherd in the East was also a 



52 The Minister as Shepherd 

guard. His mission was not only to 
oversee, it was likewise to protect. He 
was a guardian of the sheep. He was 
their defender. Sheep are among the 
most defenseless of animals. They are 
not provided with weapons of attack or 
defense. They can neither bite nor scratch 
nor kick. They can run, but not so 
fast as their enemies. A sheep is no match 
for many an animal half its size. Its 
helplessness is pitiable. It is dependent ab- 
solutely on human strength and wisdom. 
Its safety lies entirely in man. Man is its 
refuge, its buckler, its shield, its rock, its 
fortress. Everything that the Psalmist 
calls God, a sheep might call its shepherd. 
The walls of the sheepfold are built by the 
shepherd. When there are no stones, he 
builds thorn bushes into barriers. The 
door of the sheepfold is made by him, 
opened and closed by him. By his fore- 
sight the sheep are protected. By his cour- 
age they are saved. He defends them in 
the hour of attack. He safeguards them 



The Shepherd's Work 53 

when they are not aware of danger. They 
owe their safety to him when they are least 
conscious of their obligation. The shep- 
herd in the East was a guard, a protector, 
a defender. " Though I walk through the 
valley of deep darkness, I will fear no evil, 
for thou art with me." The ravine or deep 
gorge in the East was the hiding-place of 
wild animals and the resort of dangerous 
men. Even here, however, the sheep were 
secure when the shepherd was with them. 
His rod and his staff protected them. 

The safeguarding of the sheep is a prime 
function in pastoral work. How to protect 
the young men of the community from 
overwhelming temptation, how to shelter 
the girls of a village or city from unneces- 
sary dangers, how to shield the wage- 
earner from the gambling den and the 
liquor saloon, how to keep amusements and 
recreations from degenerating into forms 
of demoralization, how to curtail evils 
which cannot be annihilated, and how to 
guard boys and girls against influences 



54 The Minister as Shepherd 

which stain the mind and eat out the bloom 
of the heart, all this work of prevention is 
pastoral work, and what work is more im- 
portant and more difficult? To create ob- 
structions in the stream of evil, to build up 
walls against the packs of animal forces 
which lacerate and ruin, to erect safeguards 
on the brink of dangerous precipices over 
which thousands have fallen to their death, 
this is pastoral work, and it is the shame of 
the church that not more of it has been done. 
We have spent too much time in coaxing 
half-dead sheep back to life again, and not 
time enough in building barriers against 
the wolves. Ministers in large numbers do 
not anticipate as they should the perils 
which their people are bound to meet. 
They do not take the necessary precau- 
tions for themselves or for those entrusted 
to their keeping. They do not plan and 
work for the creation of agencies for ward- 
ing off attack. They do not intercept by 
skillful and timely measures the ruin which 
the enemy has plotted. There is demand in 



The Shepherd's Work 55 

every parish for constructive work of the 
highest order. No other work demands a 
loftier grade of intelligence and skill. The 
losses of the average parish are appalling, 
and one reason is that life is not properly 
protected. The shepherd has no genius for 
constructing sheepfolds which will keep out 
the wolves. He does not seem to know that 
it is his duty to devise means and measures 
for meeting and overcoming the hostile 
forces which are forever making warfare 
on the church of Christ. He does not 
guard. 

HI. The shepherd is a guide. Sheep are 
not independent travelers. They must have 
a human conductor. They cannot go to 
predetermined places by themselves. They 
cannot start out in the morning in search 
of pasture and then come home at evening 
time. They have apparently no sense of 
direction. The greenest pasture may be 
only a few miles away, but the sheep left 
to themselves cannot find it. What animal 
is more incapable than a sheep? He real- 



56 The Minister as Shepherd 

izes his impotence, for no animal is more 
docile. Where the shepherd leads, the 
sheep will go. He knows that the shep- 
herd is a guide and that it is safe to follow 
him. The shepherd cannot drive the sheep, 
he must lead them. Mules and hogs can 
be driven, but not sheep; their nature is to 
follow. In the East a deal of guidance is 
necessary. The pasture is often in spots 
and strips, and sometimes the strips and 
spots are far apart. Streams are not abun- 
dant, and at certain seasons the land is 
parched by drought. In such a country the 
work of guidance is difficult and urgent. 
The poet who thought of God as a shep- 
herd knew well a shepherd's work. He 
thought of God first of all as a leader. God 
goes ahead and finds the streams which are 
sweet and the pastures which are fragrant. 
" He maketh me to lie down in green pas- 
tures. He leadeth me beside still waters." 
This idea of leadership was in Jesus' mind 
when he said : " I am the good shepherd." 
His sketch of the Palestinian shepherd was 



The Shepherd's Work 57 

true to the life. " The sheep hear his voice, 
and he calleth his own sheep by name and 
leadeth them out, and the sheep follow him 
for they know his voice." 

It is a commonplace that a minister is a 
leader, and yet not every minister knows 
how to lead. In other words, he is not a 
good pastor. Some ministers try to drive. 
Their fatal weakness is an inability to see 
that shepherds cannot drive. Such men are 
always cutting, lashing, forcing, and there- 
fore always getting into trouble. They are 
continually quarreling with their people, 
and for no other reason than that they do 
not know how to lead. They push and do 
not draw, they shove and do not woo. 
They believe in propulsion and not in at- 
traction. They lack the magic of the shep- 
herd touch. They do not know human na- 
ture, they do not realize that men, like 
sheep, must be led. A minister must always 
go in advance of his people. He must lead 
them in thought. It is tragic when a minis- 
ter is not the intellectual leader of his peo- 



58 The Minister as Shepherd 

pie. If his conceptions are the conceptions 
of the average man, if his ideas are the safe 
and commonplace ideas of the general com- 
munity, if in his attitude to great reforms 
he is not in advance of the crowd, if in 
pulling down strongholds of evil, many 
are more aggressive than he, he is not a 
shepherd. A minister who does not lead is 
shirking a capital branch of pastoral work. 
His people would follow if he would only 
lead them. But he hides himself in the 
middle of the flock, and often lags in the 
rear. Sometimes he is not a leader even 
in parish enterprise. He does not teach his 
people how to work. Men and women, no 
matter how gifted and well meaning, do 
not know how to do Christian work unless 
instructed. The work lies in masses all 
around them, but they will not take hold 
of it unless their hands are trained. The 
doors of opportunity stand open, but the 
average Christian will not enter unless en- 
couraged. It is surprising how much work 
any congregation of Christian people will 



The Shepherd's Work 59 

accomplish if only they have a leader. A 
leader is not an exhorter, or a scolder, or a 
declaimer, but a man who goes ahead and 
points out the particular things which ought 
to be accomplished, and not only points 
them out, but also shows in what manner 
they may best be done. Some ministers 
can see a huge work which ought to be 
attempted, but they cannot lead their people 
into it. They can describe critically the 
strategic nature of the battle that ought to 
be fought, but they never get their people 
on to the battlefield. They are visionaries, 
dreamers, but not shepherds. They do not 
lead. No one is really a leader whom men 
do not follow. 

IV. A shepherd in the East was a phy- 
sician to the sheep. Sheep, like human 
beings, have diseases, and like all other liv- 
ing creatures on our planet they are liable 
to accident and misfortune. They cut them- 
selves, their feet get sore, they break their 
legs, they fall the victims of distempers 
and infirmities of many kinds. The ori- 



60 The Minister as Shepherd 

ental shepherd was a healer of the diseases 
of his flock. There was usually at least one 
of his sheep which was lame and ailing, 
and upon this invalid the shepherd be- 
stowed more abundant care. The sheep 
that had no appetite, the sheep that on a 
journey got out of breath, the sheep that 
limped and occasionally lay down, these 
were the sheep toward which the shep- 
herd's sympathies went out. The nature 
of his calling compelled a shepherd to be a 
doctor and a nurse. 

Jesus the good shepherd always regarded 
himself as a physician. He could not un- 
derstand why his enemies objected to his 
paying attention to the sick. When he sent 
his disciples out he told them both to preach 
and to heal, making it clear that his en- 
voys cannot fulfill their mission by words 
alone, they must do a certain work. 

It is the mission of the pastor to " min- 
ister to minds diseased; to pluck from the 
memory a rooted sorrow; to raze out the 
written troubles of the brain; and, with 



The Shepherd's Work 61 

some sweet oblivious antidote, to cleanse 
the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff, 
which weighs upon the heart." There is 
always some one ailing in the parish, 
not physically only, but mentally, morally, 
spiritually. The diseases of the soul are 
multitudinous, and the remedies provided by 
the Almighty are efficacious only when ap- 
plied by a skilled practitioner. There are 
soul diseases peculiar to certain ages and 
certain temperaments, and certain callings 
and certain environments, and the minister 
ought to know the symptoms of these dis- 
eases, the stages of their development, and 
the hygienic processes by which they may 
be cured. There is loss of appetite, emacia- 
tion, debility, fever, blindness, deafness, 
palsy, paralysis, diseases of the heart, oc- 
cult and baffling distempers of the mind, 
depression, prostration, and agonizing par- 
oxysms of the spirit. Here is a field in 
which the minister is called upon to put 
forth his skill and strength. His mission is 
to the sick, and all sick people are not sick 



62 The Minister as Shepherd 

with the same sickness, nor do they all re- 
quire the same remedies or the same kind 
of nursing. Nowhere else does the minis- 
ter need such piercing insight, such fine 
powers of discrimination, such skill in diag- 
nosis, and such ability to cope with subtle 
and mysterious forces, as here. There are 
ministers who hardly enter into this great 
realm of pastoral service. Sick consciences 
are in their parish, but they do not know 
how to treat them. Wounded hearts are 
bleeding, but they do not know how to 
stanch the flow of blood. Bereaved and 
other grief-stricken souls are mourning, 
but they do not know how to speak the heal- 
ing word. Spirits are sick unto death, but 
they can bring them no relief. There are 
those who are possessed of demons, and 
the pastor does not know how to cast them 
out. The whole science of spiritual thera- 
peutics is unknown to him, and followers 
of Jesus in many cases suffer on for years 
with diseases from which an expert spirit- 
ual physician could have delivered them. 



The Shepherd's Work 63 

There are in many a parish cases of ar- 
rested religious development, instances of 
moral paralysis, sad attacks of spiritual 
prostration which could be relieved and 
cured if only the minister understood bet- 
ter the nature of the soul and the remedies 
;' offered to human minds in Jesus Christ. 
There is a notion now afloat that the 
minister ought to take in hand all physical 
disorders, that he is shirking his duty if he 
does not widen his province to cover all 
illnesses of the flesh as well as every 
malady of the mind. It is undoubtedly true 
that body and mind together make a man, 
and that the entire man is under the law 
of God and is the subject of redemption. 
But there is no reason why a minister 
should claim to know everything, or pre- 
tend to be able to do everything. Why 
should he dispense with other servants of 
the Almighty who are also called by heaven 
to bear a share of the work of human re- 
demption ? To the physician as well as the 
clergyman God grants wisdom and grace, 



64 The Minister as Shepherd 

and to each of them is given a part to play 
in the world's life and work. It is both 
Christian humility and common sense for 
a minister to work hand in hand with men 
who have learned God's laws in other prov- 
inces of his vast kingdom and to avail him- 
self of whatever help God is willing to 
render through them. While the minister 
must not attempt to supplant the physician, 
he can never, without loss, however, for- 
get that he himself as pastor is a physician, 
and that through all of the agencies which 
God places within his reach, it is his duty 
to work for the restoration of humanity to 
physical as well as to spiritual health. 
Often the root of moral diseases is in the 
flesh, and many a spiritual phenomenon be- 
comes explicable only by the knowledge of 
physiology. The physical health of his 
people is always a matter of concern to the 
instructed pastor. Whatever ministers to 
their physical health will likewise render 
possible a fuller unfolding of their spiritual 
nature, and a more efficient service in the 



The Shepherd's Work 65 

kingdom of God. Hygiene, physical, moral, 
and spiritual, is a part of the work of the 
shepherd. The shepherd is the physician 
of the sheep. 

V. The shepherd is a savior. He saves 
sheep that are lost. A critical part of the 
shepherd's task is rescue work. Sheep have 
a propensity for getting lost. They lose 
their way through stupidity and also 
through heedlessness and folly. A sheep 
will keep his nose to the ground following 
the strip of greenest grass, little by little 
separating himself from his companions, 
until at last, his companions being com- 
pletely left out of sight, the poor isolated 
animal does not know where he is. When 
once he realizes his lost condition, he is 
furious to find his fellows. He cannot live 
alone, he was made for society. When by 
himself, he is timorous and easily panic- 
stricken. Every sight alarms him, every 
sound makes him afraid. He rushes hither 
and thither seeking his way, but his search 
is generally fruitless. A lost sheep does 



66 The Minister as Shepherd 

not get home. The more he tries to find 
his path, the farther is he likely to be from 
the fold. In his desperation he may run 
into a thicket or sink into a morass or fall 
into a pit and there perish unless the shep- 
herd finds him. A sheep is like a man in 
that he cannot save himself; without a 
savior he is irretrievably lost. In the Old 
Testament the care of the shepherd for his 
sheep is finely dwelt on. Prophets and 
poets are always extolling the shepherd's 
care, but it is not until we pass into the 
New Testament that the shepherd's solici- 
tude for the lost sheep becomes paramount 
and controlling. In the preaching of Jesus 
we get for the first time the full picture of 
a shepherd going out to seek the sheep that 
is lost. It was of this trait in shepherd- 
hood that Jesus loved to think. This was 
the ruling disposition of his own great 
heart. When he saw the multitude he was 
moved with compassion for them because 
they were distressed, and scattered as sheep 
not having a shepherd. One of the sayings 



The Shepherd's Work 67 

which the first evangelist especially loved 
and treasured was, " I am not sent but 
unto the lost sheep of the house of 
Israel." The shepherd who left his ninety- 
nine sheep in the fold and went forth in 
search of one sheep which had wandered 
away, was held up by Jesus as an ideal 
and example. Rescue work was dear to 
his heart. He was always seeking the sheep 
that was lost. That was what he was do- 
ing the day he found Matthew in the of- 
fice, and again on the day he found a 
woman at the well, and again on the day he 
found Zaccheus in the tree. So ardent 
and tireless was his love for the straying 
that one of the nicknames flung at him by 
his enemies was " friend of publicans and 
sinners/' or, in other words — " friend of 
lost sheep." 

All rescue work is strictly pastoral work. 
Whenever a minister puts forth an efifort 
to reclaim a member of his parish who has 
wandered away, he is doing a shepherd's 
work. Some ministers do not reproduce 



68 The Minister as Shepherd 

this trait of the good shepherd— the dis- 
position to seek the lost— they are inter- 
ested in the sheep in the fold, the sheep out- 
side do not much concern them. They so- 
liloquize thus : " Why do they not come 
in? If they are outside it is their own 
fault. The church is open. The Word of 
God is preached. The sacraments are ad- 
ministered. This is enough." That is a 
style of argument that brings relief to a 
certain type of ministerial mind. Such min- 
isters have few converts. The number of 
accessions on confession is small, but this 
does not disturb them, for they do not feel 
any special call to the straying sheep of the 
house of Israel. They like sheep who do 
not stray, they are fond of good sheep who 
behave well and give the shepherd no 
trouble by getting lost. It is a great bother 
to go after a sheep that has broken away— 
a sacrifice which it is hardly necessary to 
make. There are other ministers who have 
a passion for the lost, but only the lost of 
one particular type, men and women who 



The Shepherd's Work 69 

have never belonged to the church. How 
to reach the so-called unchurched masses 
is to these ministers the only great problem. 
All sorts of devices are adopted to catch 
them. When any of them are won, that 
ends the interest of the minister in them. 
They are now church members, and the 
work must go forward of rescuing others 
who are lost. But, alas, many of those 
who have been found soon wander away. 
They do not remain saved. They are ig- 
norant and foolish and like sheep stray 
from the fold, but the minister does not go 
after them, he likes sheep lost openly and 
notoriously, but not straying sheep. He 
feels incensed that his straying members 
have forsaken him, he takes it as a personal 
affront, he resents their habit of roving. 
He may in a fit of petulance say he is glad 
they are gone. At first they dropped out 
of the prayer meeting, but he did not go 
after them, or send any one else after them. 
They came only occasionally to the Sunday 
service, and later on they came not at all, 



70 The Minister as Shepherd 

but he gave them no admonition. He was 
nettled by such backsliding, but said noth- 
ing. His sermons, he knows, have been up 
to high-water mark. The Word of God 
has been faithfully preached. He has never 
been more faithful in his study, so that 
there can be no shortcoming in him. If 
sheep ramble off, it is because of their own 
folly; if they straggle behind, it is because 
they are not worth saving. Many a min- 
ister comforts himself in this way. The 
result is that the losses of the church are 
tremendous. Some churches receive large 
accessions, but never grow. They are al- 
ways adding new names, but doing noth- 
ing greater for the kingdom of God. Every 
parish is losing constantly, and part of the 
loss is inevitable. Christ lost one of his 
twelve sheep, and no minister is blame- 
worthy because he does not keep all. But 
much of the loss is culpable. It could be 
reduced greatly by more faithful shepherd- 
ing. Straying sheep could in many cases be 
brought back if only the shepherd would 



The Shepherd's Work 71 

go after them. Sheep lost for the seventh 
time could be recovered if some one in the 
parish possessed the patience and ingenuity 
of the seeking heart. The losses are usual- 
ly gradual and consequently unnoted. If 
the minister should hear some morning that 
twenty-four of his members were never 
coming to church again, he would be right- 
fully alarmed. " Why is this ? " he would 
say. " What is the matter ? What is wrong 
with me or the church that all these people 
are going away? What sort of wolf or 
jackal has gotten loose in my flock, causing 
this demoralization ? " But if these church 
members drop out one at a time silently and 
without public notice, one on the average 
each month, the minister, if not a shepherd, 
will pay no attention to the drain, even 
though at the end of two years all the 
twenty-four will have gone, and the loss to 
the church will be as great as though all 
the twenty-four had departed on the same 
day. The minister who allows one sheep to 
drop out of his flock without a wound in 



72 The Minister as Shepherd 

his heart and without lifting a hand to 
bring that sheep back, is not a good shep- 
herd. A good shepherd dog will wheel 
round and round the flock, carefully bring- 
ing into place every sheep that shows a 
disposition to lag behind. His instinct tells 
him that the art of shepherding is the art 
of taking care of the sheep which is slip- 
ping away. He knows in his own brute 
way that he brings disgrace on the race of 
shepherd dogs unless he can rescue the 
sheep that is losing itself. Ought not a 
shepherd man to be as wise as a shepherd 
dog? A minister may be a good sermon- 
izer, he may preside at weddings with 
grace, and officiate at funerals with dignity, 
but he is not a good pastor if he maintains 
an unruffled mind when a solitary member 
' of his flock wanders away. The work of 
watching demands vigilance, the work of 
guarding demands prudence, the work of 
guiding calls for courage, the work of heal- 
ing involves skill, but the work of rescuing 
\ is a work of love. Many a minister would 



The Shepherd's Work 73 

be a better shepherd if he had a more lov- 
ing heart. 

VI. That the feeding of the sheep is an 
essential duty of the shepherd calling is 
known even to those who are least familiar 
with shepherds and their work. Sheep can- 
not feed themselves, nor water themselves. 
They must be conducted to the water and 
the pasture. The water in the Orient is 
often gotten out of wells, and drawing it 
is a part of the shepherd's work. The grass 
varies with the seasons, and the shepherd 
is ever changing the location of his flock. 
He shifts it from place to place, keeping 
it now in the valley and now on the plain, 
and now leading it to the very mountain 
top in order that it may be nourished. 
Everything depends on the proper feeding 
of the sheep. Unless wisely fed they be- 
come emaciated and sick, and the wealth 
invested in them is squandered. When 
Ezekiel presents a picture of the bad shep- 
herd, the first stroke of his brush is — " he 
does not feed the flock." When Jesus 



74 The Minister as Shepherd 

hands over the church to Simon Peter, his 
first word is — " feed." The work of feed- 
ing is never to be neglected. That God 
feeds his people like a shepherd was an 
idea full of comfort to the Hebrew heart. 
He prepares the table, he causes the cup to 
run over, that is a part of his gracious min- 
istry to men. Jesus claims to be the good 
shepherd, and one of the grounds of his 
claim is that he feeds. We are to come to 
him both to drink and to eat. He is the 
bread of life and also the water of life. 

The idea of feeding is woven into the 
popular conception of the minister's work. 
" He does not feed his people " is con- 
sidered to be among the most damning of 
accusations which can be brought against 
the pastor of a church. An English poet 
has sketched in a single line the portrait of 
a minister who is what a minister ought 
not to be : " The hungry sheep look up 
and are not fed." 

But while it is universally admitted that 
the minister must feed his people, it is sur- 



The Shepherd's Work 75 

prising how little attention is paid by many 
a minister to the subject of nutrition, and 
how little thought is given to the art of feed- 
ing. Much emphasis has been placed on the 
art of sermon writing, how to choose the 
text, how to unfold the idea, how to illus- 
trate and adorn the truth, and how to per- 
fect the argument. The world is hardly 
able to contain the books which have been 
written to tell ministers how to write ser- 
mons. But in many of these books the 
idea of feeding is not considered. The ser- 
mon is not looked upon as a form of food 
to be adapted to a particular appetite, and 
to be made capable of assimilation by a 
particular stomach. The feeding of a con- 
gregation is one of the most momentous and 
difficult enterprises which any man can un- 
dertake. There is in every church a wide 
variety of ages, temperaments, appetites, 
tastes, constitutions, and a great variety of 
foods prepared in different ways is conse- 
quently demanded. The lambs are to be 
fed. Lambs are of different ages and have 



76 The Minister as Shepherd 

different needs. The sheep are to be fed. 
The sheep are of different grades and na- 
tures. The problem of problems is how to 
feed all these different kinds of lambs and 
sheep on food which shall be suitable for 
each one. The pastoral instinct is nowhere 
more sorely needed than in the work of 
preaching. Many would not call preaching 
pastoral work at all, but what is it if it is 
not pastoral ? No part of a minister's work 
is more strictly, genuinely pastoral than the 
work of preaching. When the minister 
goes into the pulpit, he is the shepherd in 
the act of feeding, and if every minister 
had borne this in mind many a ser- 
mon would have been other than it has 
been. The curse of the pulpit is the super- 
stition that a sermon is a work of art and 
* not a piece of bread or meat. It is sup- 
posed to be a declamation or an oration or 
a learned dissertation, something elegant 
and fine to be admired and applauded and 
talked about by eulogizing saints, or carped 
at by stiff-necked, unreasonable sinners. 



The Shepherd's Work 77 

Sermons rightly understood are primarily 
forms of food. They are articles of diet. 
They are meals served by the minister for 
the sustenance of spiritual life. If this 
could be remembered it would help many 
a minister to get rid of his stilted English 
and to cut off a lot of his rhetorical ruffles, 
and to free him from his bombastic elocu- 
tion, and to burn up the ornamental intro- 
ductions and skyrocket perorations. The 
shepherd's work is plain and humble. 
What true shepherd ever tried to make a 
show? A shepherd has his eyes upon the 
sheep, and his first concern is that the sheep 
shall have enough to eat. Feeding sheep 
is not romantic, the poetic element in it is 
not conspicuous. It is not an act which 
can be done with a flourish. It is prosaic 
but vital work, and is never well done un- 
less it is done by a man who has an honest 
and an earnest heart. There are few preach- 
ers who preach simply enough. Their 
English is too bookish and their style is 
too involved. They want to be Demos- 



78 The Minister as Shepherd 

thenes or Cicero and are not content to be 
a shepherd. An interesting book could be 
written on pastoral preaching, preaching 
that individualizes and feeds. How to make 
sermons that will pass easily into the blood, 
how to unfold Bible texts in a way that will 
furnish nutriment to the nerves of feeling 
and action, how to offer truth so as to 
satisfy the cravings of the human heart and 
make it strong in the doing of God's will — 
is not that one of the cardinal problems 
of the minister? and has it been, do you 
think, sufficiently considered ? Pastoral 
work is not simply making social calls, pas- 
toral work is also preaching. The minister 
does not cease to be a pastor when he goes 
into the pulpit, he then takes up one of the 
shepherd's most exacting and serious tasks. 
We sometimes hear it said of a minister: 
" He is a good pastor, but he cannot 
preach." The sentence is self-contradic- 
tory. No man can be a good pastor who 
cannot preach, any more than a man can be 
a good shepherd and still fail to feed his 



The Shepherd's Work 79 

flock. A part of shepherding is feeding, 
and an indispensable part. Some of the 
finest and most effective of all a minister's 
pastoral work is done in his sermon. In a 
sermon he can warn, protect, guide, heal, % 
rescue, and nourish. The shepherd in him 
comes to lofty stature in the pulpit. It is 
well then for a minister to ask himself now 
and then: "Am I a good pastor in the 
pulpit? Am I keeping the people too long 
in this particular field because I happen to 
like the landscape from this standpoint? 
Am I compelling them to browse too long in 
one favorite pasture? Have they nibbled 
every green thing in it down to the earth, 
and are they hungry now for grass that 
grows higher up on the mountain ? When I 
preach am I doing a shepherd's work ? Am 
I feeding the lambs, or am I exploiting my- 
self? Am I feeding the sheep, or am I 
pleasing myself? Am I playing with 
words, or am I breaking bread? Am I 
building beautiful periods, or am I drawing 
water? Am I soaring like an eagle, or am 



80 The Minister as Shepherd 

I satisfying hunger? Am I a hireling 
preaching for applause, or am I a herder 
and feeder of souls? There is nothing 
which will so chasten a minister in his ser- 
monic preparation and so discipline his 
style as facing the shepherd idea. Christ 
was the great teacher, and just because he 
was the great teacher he was also the good 
shepherd. A shepherd who is skilled in 
his work never fails to feed his flock. 

VII. The oriental shepherd did one thing 
more — he loved the sheep. He loved them 
in a way unknown t6 occidental shepherds. 
His relations to them were closer and more 
tender than anything found in the modern 
sheep-raising world. The solitude of those 
eastern lands created wondrous intimacies 
between animal and human life. Man and 
beast became linked together by ties beauti- 
ful and sacred. There sprang up in the 
sheep a fondness for the shepherd, and in 
the shepherd an affection for the sheep 
which displayed themselves in many ways. 
Here is a lovely touch : " He calleth his 



The Shepherd's Work 81 

own sheep by name." It was not necessary 
that he should give to each sheep a name, 
but he did it because he liked them. Love 
always individualizes. It takes delight in 
coining pet names. It is not love if it is 
not personal and intimate. Here is another 
touch : " He carries the lambs in his 
bosom." It was not necessary that he do 
this, but he did it because he liked them. 
When the shepherd was not watching or 
guarding or guiding or healing or saving or 
feeding, he was doing something finer than 
any of these — he was communing with the 
sheep, playing with them, talking to them, 
and entering so far as a man could, into 
their poor brute life. The result was that 
the sheep were devoted to the shepherd. 
They knew his voice, every cadence of it 
was music, every inflection was an inspira- 
tion. The oriental shepherd was a lover 
of the sheep, and it was because of his at- 
tachment to them that in time of danger 
he thought not of himself but of them. In 
defending them he was willing to lay down 



82 The Minister as Shepherd 

his life. This was the crowning virtue of 
the Palestinian shepherd — his self-sacrific- 
ing love. 

It is also the crowning excellence of all 
the shepherds of Christ's sheep. Paul says 
to the Corinthians : " Above all these 
things put on love, which is the bond of per- 
fectness." Paul is thinking of the soul as 
being clothed with the Christian virtues. 
Around these various beautiful manifesta- 
tions of the Christian spirit must be thrown 
the greatest of the virtues — love. What- 
ever other virtues a shepherd of Christ's 
sheep may have, he is poor and naked 
without love. He must have many virtues, 
but the one that gives vitality to all of 
them, and which binds them all together, is 
love. He has various works to do, but his 
supreme work is loving. If he loves he 
will do all the things which shepherds 
ought to do. He will watch! When did 
love ever have drowsy eyelids? Love can 
outrun the longest night. He will guard. 
Love shields with jealous care. Love pro- 



The Shepherd's Work 83 

tects at all hazards. He will guide ! Love 
has far-seeing eyes. Love detects the pit- 
falls and finds safe paths into the land of 
peace. He will heal! The hands of love 
are gentle. Love binds up wounds. He 
will seek and save! Love cannot sleep so 
long as the one it loves is on the mountain 
in the storm. He will feed! Love is 
the great nourisher at life's feast. Love 
satisfies. 

Would you know then the work of a 
shepherd, look at Jesus of Nazareth, that 
great shepherd of the sheep who stands 
before us forever the perfect pattern of 
shepherdhood, the flawless example for all 
who are entrusted with the care of souls. 
" I am the Good Pastor," he says, " I 
watch, I guard, I guide, I heal, I rescue, I 
feed. I love from the beginning, and I 
love to the end. Follow me ! " 



Ill 

The Shepherd's Opportunity 

You have all heard that the day of the 
preacher is gone. The printing press has 
taken away his occupation. He still goes 
on speaking, but it is to a dwindling congre- 
gation, and by and by all the pews will be 
empty. The decadence of the pulpit is 
one of the popular themes of our day. The 
contrast between the modern pulpit pigmy 
and the pulpit giant of a former age is a 
subject with which sportive spirits make 
merry. 

And now it is beginning to be whispered 
that the day of the pastor also is gone. The 
modern world has no need of a shepherd. 
The typical pastor of bygone generations is 
an antiquated figure for whom no room can 
be found on the stage of our modern world. 
The ancient custom of catechizing children 
84 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 85 

from house to house, and calling entire 
households together for Bible reading and 
prayer, the fatherly offices of counsel and 
admonition, and the gracious and intimate 
ministry of the spiritual guide — all this is 
a fashion which has passed away. The 
world has outgrown the need of a shep- 
herd. Education has fitted men to think 
and act for themselves. Man is no longer 
a sheep. Every man is his own shep- 
herd. Pastoral guidance is an imperti- 
nence. Wealth has increased and has 
brought with it a new sense of self-con- 
fidence and independence which will not 
brook interference from an ecclesiastical 
official. Men now have many helps which 
they did not possess in former days. A 
multitude of magazines and books furnish 
all the information and stimulus which are 
needed. The pastor knows nothing which 
it is not possible for the alert layman to 
know. He may, like other men, make so- 
cial calls and chat about things of current 
interest, but the old need for pastoral 



86 The Minister as Shepherd 

attention is gone. Whatever guidance 
is desired will be gotten from leaders 
who speak in printer's ink. Besides all 
this, men are living in strenuous days 
and have no time to be talked to by a 
pastor. Business is business and cannot 
be dropped even for a moment in the 
heat of the day. Multitudes leave home 
for their work in the early morning and 
return fagged at evening time. Through a 
larger part of the day the children are at 
school, and during the afternoon the women 
are absorbed in their social functions. 
There is ordinarily no hour in the day in 
which a pastor can meet the entire house- 
hold. There is no eager anticipation, 
therefore, of the coming of the pastor. He 
is busy, and so is everybody else, and pas- 
toral service, being largely uncalled for and 
consequently perfunctory, can be dispensed 
with without loss. In large cities the 
difficulties are unusually great. There is 
no parish system among our Protestant 
churches and members of each congrega- 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 87 

tion are scattered over wide areas, render- 
ing pastoral visitation so laborious that 
church members in large numbers cease to 
demand it of their minister. Moreover, a 
considerable section of society has become 
nomadic in its habits. Men and women flit 
south in the winter and north in the 
summer and across the Atlantic between 
times, and occasionally make a tour of 
the world. Thousands of Christians own 
summer homes in which they live the 
larger part of the year. The winter months 
in the city are so crowded that pastoral at- 
tention seems an imposition. Modern civ- 
ilization has escorted the pastor to the 
frontier and politely bowed him out. 

Such is the conclusion of many, but it is 
mistaken. The age of the shepherd has C. 
just arrived. Never has he been so much 
needed as now. Never before have there 
been so many important things for him to 
do. To be sure he cannot do his work in 
the old way. The old order ever changes. 
New occasions teach new duties, and time 



88 The Minister as Shepherd 

makes ancient forms of doing things un- 
couth. The pastor of the early days in his 
colonial dress is no longer in demand, but 
the world awaits a shepherd who can meet 
the needs of the present hour. In one sense 
the world is always changing, and in another 
sense it is evermore the same. Steam 
and electricity alter many things, other 
things they do not touch. They have not 
changed the processes of the growth of a 
grain of corn, nor have they modified the 
appetites and passions of the human heart. 
The soul is now what it has been from the 
beginning, and now as always it needs a 
shepherd's care. Civilization transforms 
the surface, the interior life it leaves un- 
touched. Schools and colleges do not make 
obsolete a shepherd's work. The young 
men now coming from our universities are 
as much in need of pastoral guidance as 
any men in the world. Thousands of them 
are confused in their religious thinking, not 
able yet to reconcile the teachings of Christ 
with what they have learned from their 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 89 

professors. The traditional faith is no 
longer tenable, and they have not gained 
another to take its place. Does anybody 
suppose that a college diploma renders a 
man immune to all diseases, so that he is 
no longer in need of a physician? Why 
should it be imagined that a college course 
lifts a man above the need of the healing 
power of a physician sent by the Son of 
God? That which education cannot do is 
also beyond the power of money. Money 
may render men lofty-minded and harden 
their hearts to the influences of a spiritual 
adviser, but the needs of a rich man are 
as great as those of his poorest brother. 
Does not our Lord say that it is hard for 
a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
God? If this be true, the rich man is in 
special need of assistance, and who is bet- 
ter fitted to give him aid than the shepherd ? 
Rich people are more like poor people than 
is sometimes conceded. Both alike are ex- 
posed to temptations, and both alike suf- 
fer disappointment and sorrow. Into the 



90 The Minister as Shepherd 

homes of the rich and the poor sickness 
comes and death, and the desolation of be- 
reavement, and the darkness of doubt and 
despair. Rich men with their hands filled 
with gold can lose the higher treasures of 
faith and hope and love, and, though liv- 
ing in fine houses, they can be miserable 
and poor and blind and naked. It is a 
great mistake to assume that well-to-do 
people have no need of a shepherd. The 
minister is unworthy of his calling who 
neglects or scorns the rich. It is a popular 
delusion that pastors are always inclined 
to devote more time to the rich than to the 
poor, whereas the fact is that poor people 
are not nearly so likely to be neglected by 
the average pastor as the rich. Not so 
many rich people would have lost their early 
faith and degenerated into social idlers and 
conscienceless worldlings, if they had re- 
ceived more continuous and faithful pas- 
toral care. There is no class more neglected 
in our great cities than the rich. The pas- 
toral work in a rich community is far more 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 91 

difficult than in a community which is poor. 
It was easier for Christ to help a poor man 
than a rich man, and that has been the ex- 
perience of all his ministers. But the rich 
men in Christ's day always had his sym- 
pathy and attention and to them full offers 
of his grace were given. The poorest beg- 
gar and the richest publican in Jericho were 
alike the recipients of his bounty. Money 
is never going to take away the occupation 
of the shepherd, nor will the printing press 
crowd him out. Instead of books dispensing 
with the shepherd's labor, they give him in- 
finitely more to do. It is printed matter 
which causes a deal of mischief in our 
modern world. Many false prophets have 
gone abroad, and they wear books' clothing. 
All sorts of wolves and jackals, of serpents 
also and birds of prey, are moving through 
the world scattering and tearing the sheep. 
The literature of unbelief is enormous, and 
millions are reading it. Fools and dunces, 
ignoramuses and fanatics, knaves and mis- 
chief makers of many stripes, are writing 



92 The Minister as Shepherd 

for the daily papers and magazines, and 
pour forth in books their shallow thoughts 
and low ideals and pestilential fancies upon 
the world. Anybody, no matter how stupid 
in mind and corrupt in heart, can write a 
book and find a multitude to read it. False 
notions, half truths, shallow reasonings, 
wild vagaries, crazy hallucinations, preten- 
tious philosophizings, silly prophecies, and 
darkening interpretations sweep over the 
world like a flood. Immature and diseased 
and ill-informed and half-baked minds 
utilize the printing press in disseminating 
schemes and programs, which if adopted 
would upset the world. Never has there 
been such need for sound brains and sane 
thinking. Never has there been so loud a 
call for shepherds fitted by natural endow- 
ment and training to lead men out of the 
morasses of erroneous opinions into the hill 
country of Christian truth. One who 
comes into close touch with individual men 
is amazed often at the perverted notions 
and curious misinterpretations of Chris- 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 93 

tianity which sometimes lodge in the heads 
of apparently intelligent men. Even persons 
who have attended church services for years 
sometimes betray the most astonishing ig- 
norance in regard to things one would have 
supposed they had mastered in childhood. 
Teaching from the pulpit does not reach in 
thousands of cases the special need of the 
individual mind. It is only by talking face 
to face with one person as Christ talked 
face to face with Nicodemus, and face to 
face with the woman at the well, that the 
root of the difficulty is reached and the 
darkness is scattered. The printing press 
has created new kingdoms for the shepherd 
to conquer. 

It is true that the pastoral problem in 
great cities is peculiarly intricate and baf- 
fling, but no one who knows the modern 
city would deny that the city needs the 
shepherd. It is here that the crowds make 
one think of the crowds which reminded 
Jesus of sheep scattered and without a 
shepherd. It is the tragedy of the city that 



94 The Minister as Shepherd 

such multitudes have no one to care for 
them. Thousands of young men are there 
without parents, and with no strong friend 
to give counsel. Thousands of girls are 
there without a mother, and with no one 
to take a mother's place. Thousands of 
men and women in middle life are there, 
broken in health and also in hope, who 
have surrendered the ideals of the early 
years. The aged are there looking wist- 
fully at the western sky and wondering. 
Difficult it is indeed to shepherd so great a 
multitude, but because a task is difficult is 
no reason why it should be abandoned. 
After the skeptic has painted the picture 
of the city situation as black as he can paint 
it, and has put into it every difficulty and 
obstacle to pastoral service which his eye 
has seen or his mind conceived, the true 
minister of Christ will not be daunted but 
will plunge at once bold-hearted into pas- 
toral work. It is a work which requires 
extraordinary wisdom, unfailing patience, 
plodding fidelity, unfaltering boldness, a 
genius for hope, abiding faith, and bound- 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 95 

less love, but there is none other that is 
more clearly the work that Christ just now 
wishes done, and upon the faithful per- 
formance of which the future of humanity 
more manifestly depends. The cities must 
be saved, and they are to be saved by 
shepherds. 

It must be conceded that a pastor does 
not have so good a chance to shine as 
formerly. There was a patriarchal dignity 
and splendor belonging to the shepherd of 
the earlier time which can never be repro- 
duced. Our modern shepherd cannot be 
so conspicuous. He cannot stand upon a 
pedestal. He cannot be so picturesque, but 
he can still be useful, and this after all is 
in Jesus' thought the highest honor within 
the reach of mortals. The modern shep- 
herd can be leaven. He can be salt. He % 
can be light. He can go about doing good. \ 
He can give. He can be the servant of all. 
He can lay down his life. The God who is 
building the world of our day has left in it 
a large and glorious place for the shepherd. 

Let us measure the dimensions of the 



\ 



96 The Minister as Shepherd 

opportunity for pastoral service which is 
now presented. Note, first of all, how 
sorely our churches need it. For the last 
ten years we have been hearing constantly 
of failing church attendance, and reduced 
accessions, and lowered Sunday School 
membership, not in one quarter but in many 
quarters of the Christian world. There are 
those who feel that the church has come to 
a crisis, and men are asking if Jesus 
is indeed the one who was expected or 
whether it is time to begin to look for 
another. Along with this shrinking of 
numbers in our churches and Bible Schools 
and Schools of Theology, there has gone on 
a continual shortening of the pastorate. 
Ministers do not stay with their churches 
as they used to stay. After a year or two 
or three, both minister and people are too 
often glad to sever the pastoral relation. 
The pastor departs for pastures new, a 
fresh committee is appointed, and the ordeal 
of finding the ideal man is once more gone 
through with. Sometimes the minister 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 97 

stays, to the consternation of many hearts. 
The peace of the parish is not what it ought 
to be, there is discontent in the heart of the 
minister and dissatisfaction in the hearts 
of the people. Never, perhaps, have there 
been so many restless and fault-finding 
parishes as within the last dozen years. 

Varied efforts have been made to deal 
with the situation. Different physicians 
have made divers diagnoses, and the reme- 
dies prescribed have been diverse. One 
man has said : " Let us enrich the serv- 
ice — people do not come to church because 
the worship is thin and bald — let us borrow 
miscellaneous bits of ritual and adorn the 
order of our service: thus will the church 
make herself attractive to many who have 
hitherto stayed away." Another has said: 
" Let us revise our creed. It is too long and 
too scholastic. Men of our day are of- 
fended by doctrines couched in the lan- 
guage of the past. Let us write a shorter 
creed. Or, since many men are skeptical 
in regard to what were once called funda- 



98 The Minister as Shepherd 

mentals, let us do away with creeds alto- 
gether. Thus will be made a wide-open 
door and multitudes will enter." Another 
has said : " Let us advertise our services. 
Let us tell the town what we are doing. 
Advertising is legitimate, let us use the 
newspapers and flood the town with invita- 
tion cards, let us blazon abroad the fact 
that all are welcome. Thus will men know 
that things are moving and that the church 
is interested in their souls." Still another 
has said : " Let us organize the men, let 
us band them together in leagues and clubs. 
Our men hitherto have done but little, let 
us get them interested in missions and in 
various forms of church activity, and then 
the kingdom of God will come with power." 
Another has suggested : " Let us send for 
an Evangelist, a man who has a genius for 
catching the public ear. What is needed is 
a prophet with flaming tongue who can 
draw and hold the people, forcing them to 
a decision for Christ and the church. Let 
us organize mass meetings, with a great 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 99 

and glorious choir, and by the sheer at- 
tractiveness of the program let us compel 
the unwilling to come in. ,, Another has 
said : "We can do nothing with our pres- 
ent preacher — he is a good man, but he can- 
not preach. He means well, but his tongue 
is tedious. He is not great enough for so 
exceptional a field. He might do well 
where the people are less cultured, but for a 
congregation so critical and fastidious a 
different type of man is a necessity." 

All these six doctors have agreed in this, 
that the one thing essential is an attraction 
strong enough to draw men inside of a 
consecrated building. Their common as- 
sumption has been that the work of Christ 
is really prosperous only when crowds are 
assembled in his name, and that the su- 
preme problem of the Christian church is 
how to devise a Sunday service so attrac- 
tive that people cannot stay away. And so 
in many a field one or two or more of these 
six expedients have been tried. The serv- 
ice has been enriched and then made still 



100 The Minister as Shepherd 

richer. It has been embroidered, flounced, 
and tucked. The creed has been whittled 
down until nothing at all remained. The 
advertisements have been large and vivid, 
and printer's ink has flowed in rivers. The 
men have been organized and reorganized, 
and drilled in the art of holding dinners at 
which only expert speakers gave eloquent 
advice. Evangelists of vast prestige have 
delivered their stirring message, and then 
hurried on their flaming way. One min- 
ister has been succeeded by another, in the 
hope that Chrysostom the golden-mouthed 
might finally appear. But, alas, after all 
the remedies have been tested the last state 
of the church has, in many instances, been 
worse than the first. It is a stiff-necked 
generation with which the church to-day 
has to deal, and these promising experi- 
mentations seem impotent in bringing it to 
Christ. Now and then some one has ven- 
tured to suggest that the church should go 
to the people instead of the people coming 
to the church, and the new idea has been 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 101 

carried out for a month or two with en- 
thusiasm and high hope. The minister has 
locked up his church and gone into a thea- 
ter or into a tent or out upon the street 
corner, bringing his message to all who 
would hear. In this enterprising mission 
some of the faithful have accompanied him, 
glad to prove by the crucifixion of their 
tastes and inclinations that they were sin- 
cerely desirous of doing the work of the 
Lord. But in spite of all these efforts pros- 
perity has lingered, and churches by the 
score have felt themselves discomfited and 
conquered. After a spasm of zeal the old 
coolness crept in again. There were crowds 
for a season, and then the old empty pews 
were as conspicuous as they were at first. 
Only here and there has it been recog- 
nized that the solution of the problem lies 
in the shepherd — one who shall go where 
the sheep are, not with a grand declama- 
tion, but with a heart that loves and solaces 
and heals. He must live with the people, 
think with their mind, feel with their heart, 



102 The Minister as Shepherd 

see with their eyes, hear with their ears, 
suffer with their spirit. He must bear 
their griefs and carry their sorrows. He 
must be wounded for their transgressions 
and bruised for their iniquities. The chas- 
tisement of their peace must be upon him, 
and with his stripes they must be healed. 
They all like sheep have gone astray, and 
he must be willing to have laid on him the 
iniquity of them all. It is the sacrificial 
note in the ministry which is too often lack- 
ing in these later days. The minister has 
become too much a man of a book. Like 
the ancient scribes he is a scholar and some- 
times a pedant. When the Good Shepherd 
appeared in Galilee, the contrast between 
him and the other shepherds was perceived 
at once. There was a sympathy in Jesus' 
tone and a gentleness in his touch which 
proved at once that he was with the people 
in their sorrows and upward strivings. The 
chief trouble with the modern church is 
that in too many localities it has lost con- 
tact with the life of the town. It is out of 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 103 

touch with the souls of men in their pres- 
ent perplexities and needs, and hence it 
cannot influence them. The impression is 
abroad that Christianity is a pretty speech, 
a bit of idealism, a lovely dream, a stanza 
of poetry, a piece of Sunday acting, some- 
thing that the preacher can say by rote, 
and to which the saints can say, " Amen " ; 
and not a sober, serious, week-day life. 
What the world most wants to-day is shep- 
herding. The world has many comforts, 
luxuries in abundance; what it lacks is 
love. Love cannot be satisfactorily ex- 
pressed to our generation in printer's ink, 
in evangelistic appeals, in pulpit eloquence, 
or in doctrinal statements. The expression 
which the world now demands is the love 
of the shepherd who takes the lambs in his 
bosom, who gently leads those who have 
their young, and who day by day lays down 
his life for the sheep. A generation ago r 
the word of God was the Bible, to-day the 
word of God is Jesus and the man who has 
the spirit of Jesus. A genuine Christian 



104 The Minister as Shepherd 

is the only epistle which the world now 
cares to read. Multitudes care little for 
worship, less for church polity, still less for 
creeds, nothing for traditions and cere- 
monies. Character is everything. Shep- 
herding work is the work for which hu- 
manity is crying. The twentieth century 
is the century of the shepherd. 

The shortening of pastorates is due to 
the fact that the tenderness and sacredness 
of the old pastoral relation are fading out. 
The relation of the minister to the parish is 
now too often that of a platform speaker 
to an audience, of a reformer to a com- 
munity, of an engineer to a machine, and 
not that of a friend to a company of 
friends. If the minister is simply a Sun- 
day lecturer, he can leave town any day, 
and no one will be sadder. If he is only a 
public reformer, he can depart at the end 
of any week and many persons will be glad. 
If he is a machinist, expert in managing 
organizations, his place can easily be filled 
by another — engineers are abundant. If 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 105 

he is a shepherd, if he knows his sheep by 
name, and if his sheep know his voice, he 
cannot pass from one fold to another with- 
out a great loneliness and heaviness of 
spirit, and without deep wounds in the 
hearts of those he leaves behind him. It 
is because the shepherd idea is faint and 
the orator or preacher idea is so largely 
dominant that churches are able to change 
ministers with such slight concern, and that 
ministers can pass from one parish to 
another with lightness of heart and even 
rejoicing. If the church of Christ is to be 
saved, she must be born again into the 
glory of the shepherd idea. 

That a multitude to-day need shepherd- 
ing cannot be disputed. The present moral 
and religious situation is too well known 
to demand description here. It has been 
photographed again and again and printed 
in colors, and the pictures have been held 
before our eyes so that there is no excuse 
for confused notions as to the present con- 
dition of mankind. It is a somber world 



106 The Minister as Shepherd 

on which the electric lights of our brilliant 
civilization fall. When Jesus looked out 
upon the crowds in Galilee, he at once 
thought of a neglected flock of sheep. The 
shepherds of Palestine had not done their 
duty. The plight of the people was piti- 
able. Matthew says that Jesus was moved 
with compassion because the people were 
like sheep distressed and scattered. The 
description is graphic. By " distressed " 
one is to understand — worried, harassed, 
vexed, tired out, exhausted. In the other 
word — " scattered " — we have a picture of 
a lot of sheep thrown down, one or two 
lying in this place, a few in that place, still 
another group in a third place. The 
unity of the flock is broken because of the 
attacks of enemies, and the lack of a shep- 
herd's care. 

What two better words can be found to 
paint the present situation ? Are not multi- 
tudes, to-day, distressed in body, mind, and 
estate? It is an age of reconstruction, re- 
organization, readjustment. Mighty move- 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 107 

ments are taking place in the industrial and 
commercial worlds. Conditions fluctuate, 
work is unsteady, positions are insecure. 
Money takes wings and flies away. Even 
giants are pushed unmercifully to the wall. 
It is a money-making age, and men are 
harassed by the care of wealth. Great 
fortunes bring with them multiplied anxie- 
ties, and the sight of colossal wealth breeds 
in many minds sour envy and fevered dis- 
content. It is an age of machinery. Steel 
and electricity perform a deal of work, but 
never have men been more weary and more 
heavy laden than just now. Multitudes are 
perplexed in regard to the things of the 
spirit. It is an age of new ideas, novel 
interpretations, bold hypotheses, daring in- 
novations. Everything is the object of 
furious assault. The industry of the print- 
ing press by giving voice to the thoughts 
and imaginings of a multitude of minds 
has converted the earth into a tower of 
Babel, and men are living in a welter of 
confusion. Intellectual difficulties and prac- 



108 The Minister as Shepherd 

tical perplexities combine to cause the pres- 
ent distress. What shall I think? What 
shall I believe? Which way shall I go? 
What shall I do? What is true? What is 
right? What is duty? — in this strange, 
complex, discordant, bewildered twentieth 
century. Surely the world to-day is call- 
ing loud for guidance. The distress of the 
multitude is a cry in the ears of the church 
of God for shepherds. 

Men are distressed and they are scat- 
tered. Irresistible forces have driven them 
apart. Millions have passed from one 
country into another. In the city of New 
York 1,926,900 white men and women 
were born in foreign lands. Other millions 
have passed from rural life into cities. The 
old homes are broken up, the old ties are 
severed, families are scattered. Industrial 
forces drive men into separated groups and 
classes. The wage-earner and the capitalist 
have never been farther apart. People are 
classified according to their financial re- 
sources. Every city has its elegant avenues 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 109 

and its grimy slums. Men are segregated 
by forces over which they have no control. 
There are chasms as deep and bridgeless as 
the gulf in the parable of Dives and Laza- 
rus. The result is an enormous mass of 
suspicion and envy and ill-will. Large sec- 
tions of society are sour. The disgruntled 
are numbered by the tens of thousands. If 
hate is murder, then the world to-day is in 
a murderous mood. There are quarters in 
which the church can do no mighty 
works because of these social estrange- 
ments. There are other quarters in which 
the message of the church is not even 
listened to, so stubborn is the prejudice and 
so bitter the resentment. What humanity 
just now needs is a great host of peace- 
makers, men who shall serve as mediators 
between hostile classes of society. What is 
needed is the persuasive tone, the gentle 
approach, the sympathetic touch. It is the 
shepherd rather than the herald who is 
needed now, not the man who can deliver 
eloquent proclamations but the man who 



110 The Minister as Shepherd 

goes about doing good. It is easy to criti- 
cise a sermon, it is not so easy to scoff at 
good-will manifested in lovely ways. The 
man who tears the creed to shreds will 
succumb to repeated acts of kindness. 
Even the skeptic who is fond of saying 
that all Christians are hypocrites and all 
preachers hirelings, cannot permanently 
stand up against the pressure of a loving 
heart. The impression prevalent in the 
non-churchgoing world is that ministers 
are talkers, salaried palaverers paid to say 
sweet and soothing things for the men who 
pay their salaries. There is nothing which 
will break down this prejudice like the self- 
sacrificing labors of a shepherd. The ques- 
tions are often discussed — " How can we 
reach the unchurched masses — how can we 
gain the wage-earner — how can we win the 
laboring man ? " It is safe to say the 
orator will not win him, nor will the theo- 
logian, nor the doctor of philosophy, nor 
the connoisseur in literature. He will sur- 
render only to the shepherd. 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 111 

Ezekiel in his description of the religious 
condition of his day adds a touch which is 
not expressed in the two adjectives — dis- 
tressed and scattered. The prophet dwells 
on the fact that sheep in his day were scat- 
tered, and he then adds, " They became food 
to all the beasts of the field." The descrip- 
tion of that far-off day is true to present 
fact. In all times of skepticism and con- 
fusion, men become the easy victims of 
charlatans and fanatics. Those who wan- 
der away from Christianity and feed them- 
selves on husks, by and by become so 
hungry that they throw themselves into the 
arms of the first pretentious religious lead- 
er who happens to cross their path. Noth- 
ing is more amazing than the credulity of 
those who have found Christianity too hard 
to accept. There is no page of recent his- 
tory more saddening than the story of the 
rise and prosperity of a multitude of re- 
ligious movements which must inevitably at 
last come to nothing. The United States, 
proudest of all countries of her churches 



112 The Minister as Shepherd 

and schools, is a paradise for religious im- 
postors and magicians. This is because of 
our worldliness and the practical godless- 
ness of large classes of our well-to-do peo- 
ple. The type of man represented in the 
New Testament by Simon the Sorcerer has 
never become extinct, and in enlightened 
America, as in benighted Samaria, when- 
ever Simon (or his wife) appears and gives 
out that himself is some great one, many 
give heed from the least to the greatest, 
saying : " This man is that power of God 
which is called great." Every large city 
swarms with cults whose devotees are fed 
on various philosophical concoctions more 
or less tinctured with the Christian flavor. 
The wolves are as shrewd as ever, they 
fatten on the sheep. Men and women are 
as helpless as of old. Unless shepherded 
they become " food to all the beasts of the 
field. " Ezekiel represents God as mourn- 
ing over the situation. " My sheep wander 
through all the mountains and upon every 
high hill. Yea, my sheep were scattered 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 113 

upon all the face of the earth, and there 
was none that did search or seek after 
them." The situation is not so dark as it 
was. Thousands of faithful shepherds are 
in the field, but the number is not sufficient 
for the present crisis. 

The individual is slipping out of sight. 
Many things conspire to submerge him. By 
the steam engine, factories and mills were 
created, and men were summoned from 
their homes and small shops to work in 
groups in huge buildings. In that day they 
ceased to be individuals and degenerated 
into " hands." The principle of coopera- 
tion in the business world has worked it- 
self out in corporations, syndicates, and 
trusts, the individual disappearing in this 
larger person created by the State. The 
growth of cities has a tendency to obliterate 
the outlines of individuality, and men when 
massed together forget their individual 
worth. " What matters it what I think or 
say or do here in this great city ?" Such is 
the soliloquy which rises spontaneously 



114 The Minister as Shepherd 

to many lips. The emphasis of modern 
thought on heredity and environment as 
controlling influences on human life, has 
worked to break down in multitudes the 
sense of personal accountability. Children 
are not to blame since they are what they 
are because of their parents; and their 
parents are not to blame because they are 
the products of society. In this way the 
individual conscience is dulled and the 
flame of personal responsibility is snuflfed 
out. The talk to-day is about the so- 
cial problem, the corporate responsibility, 
the institutional functions. Society looms 
large and the individual man dwindles. 
Here is a call for the shepherd. The shep- 
herd has an individualizing eye. He sees 
the solitary sheep. He cares for the per- 
sonal need. The good shepherd always 
says : " I know my own, and my own 
know me." He calls his own sheep by 
name. It is an interesting fact that the 
last sentence which we can trace to the pen 
of St. John is : " Salute the friends by 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 115 

name." John is the man who came near 
to the Good Shepherd's heart, and who 
narrated in his gospel the allegory in which 
Jesus says that the shepherd calls his own 
sheep by name; and the last time John 
speaks to us he tells us not to forget this 
personal and individualizing touch. All the 
Apostles are great teachers of individual- 
ism. They learned it from the Master. 
One of the most thrilling chapters in the 
New Testament is the last chapter of 
Paul's letter to the Romans. It is a list of 
names which ought to be read often in our 
churches. The names mean nothing to us, 
but they meant everything to the men and 
women who owned them, and it ought to 
warm our hearts to think how warm their 
hearts became when that chapter was read 
before the congregation. We think of Paul 
as a matchless theologian ; we do not often 
enough think of him as an ideal pastor. He 
was a faithful shepherd even unto death. 
In the Roman prison condemned to die, 
writing his last letter he closes with a para- 



116 The Minister as Shepherd 

graph which is beautifully pastoral : " Sa- 
lute Prisca and Aquila and the house of 
Onesiphorus. Erastus remained at Corinth ; 
but Trophimus I left at Miletus sick. ,, 
Strange, you say, that that last letter of 
the greatest of the apostles should end with 
matters so tame and insignificant. It is 
not strange. The manner of the ending of 
Paul's last letter and the style of the end- 
ing of John's last letter is revelation — it 
reveals the place in the Christian church 
of the shepherd's touch. 

It is worth noting that Matthew couples 
the compassion of our Lord over the sheep 
that are distressed and scattered with the 
exhortation : " Pray the Lord of the har- 
vest that he send forth laborers into his 
harvest." There is enormous pastoral 
work to do to-day, and the shepherds are 
few. It is one of your duties to keep pray- 
ing and to teach your people to pray that 
more laborers may go forth to the work. 
If this is your prayer and also the prayer 
of the people, you will by and by have a 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 117 

corps of volunteer pastors, trained and di- 
rected by yourself in the doing of pastoral 
service, and when your church becomes a 
larger one, you will have in addition one 
or more salaried shepherds in order that 
every form of pastoral service may be 
promptly and faithfully attended to. If 
your church is in a great city, you will have 
a staff of pastors, for in proportion to the 
effectiveness of the pastoral ministration 
will your church meet the needs of the situ- 
ation and accomplish the work which God 
at this time desires to make prosper in your 
hands. 

Two ideas are in the air which are in- 
fluencing many minds: efficiency and con- 
servation. One reads these two words on 
every hand. They have worked their way 
into common conversation. Everywhere 
men are asking, how can I be more ef- 
ficient? and how can I save that which is 
now going to waste? Business men are 
overhauling their system, trying to see at 
what point they can make improvement. 



118 The Minister as Shepherd 

The intensity of competition makes it nec- 
essary that all bungling and wasteful meth- 
ods be gotten rid of. Every part of the 
business must be brought up to the highest 
pitch of perfection. Men are looking for 
results. The machinery must produce as 
large a product as possible. The ratio be- 
tween the energy put in and the product 
gotten out must be improved. Fortune 
hangs upon this. The continued existence 
of the business depends upon it. The 
standards are everywhere going up. What 
was counted good enough ten years ago 
is not tolerated now. Every capable busi- 
ness man is demanding a higher grade of 
efficiency in every department of his busi- 
ness. In agriculture this movement has al- 
ready worked astonishing results. It was 
discovered not long ago that farmers have 
not known how to farm. They were ig- 
norant of the soil and of the way to get 
large crops. They did not know how to 
get out of an acre of ground what an acre 
ought to yield. And so in recent years ex- 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 119 

pert leaders have been bringing the farm- 
ers down to the earth, teaching them that 
it is not the poor weather which is respon- 
sible for thin crops so much as the poor 
methods of working the soil. They have 
been taught to go below the soil and make 
war on a host of bugs and worms which 
have played havoc with the seed. Farm- 
ers have learned that it does not pay to 
plant poor seed. Iowa farmers were in the 
habit of planting three kernels of corn to a 
hill, and were satisfied if they could get 
one healthy stock with one ear of corn 
weighing eleven and a half ounces. They 
are satisfied with that no longer. They are 
increasing the number of stocks and they 
are adding to the weight of the ear. The 
yield per acre has been in some cases 
doubled, trebled, quadrupled, just by the 
exercise of more thought. Recently there 
were some twenty boys representing the 
Boys' Corn Clubs of the United States 
who met in Washington City as the guests 
of our Department of Agriculture. One 



120 The Minister as Shepherd 

boy had succeeded in raising on one acre 
over fifteen times as many bushels of corn 
as is raised by the average farmer. All 
over the world men are at work on the 
problem how to increase the yield of the 
soil. It is now certain that we have never 
begun to get out of the soil what the soil 
is ready to give, and that all the dismal 
prophecies of the population outstripping 
the power of the soil to sustain it, are fig- 
ments of the ignorant imagination. A wise 
man has recently said, " We must get down 
to the ground if we want to get the most 
out of it." It is equally true that if the 
minister would get the most out of the 
people he must come down where they are. 
The parish is a farm. The average parish 
does not yield as much as it should. Men 
are rightfully demanding of the church 
greater harvests. Considering its num- 
bers, its wealth and its culture, the church 
is not measuring up to present-day expecta- 
tions. It does not do enough for social 
betterment. Ministers, as well as farmers, 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 121 

must set themselves to a restudy of the 
soil. The yield can be doubled and quad- 
rupled with wider knowledge and more 
abundant skill. What is needed is a re- 
study of human nature, and a more pains- 
taking care with the individual life. We 
have been too much in the clouds. There 
have been too many generalities, too much 
reliance on wholesale methods, too much 
slap-dash, hit or miss, helter-skelter action 
to produce satisfactory results. If farm- 
ers can add a stock to the number of stocks 
growing in every hill of corn, why should 
not ministers increase by pains and prayer 
the number of saints now growing in the 
parish? If farmers can add, by taking 
thought, three ounces to the weight of the 
average ear of corn, ministers might possi- 
bly increase by obedience to the laws of 
God the weight of Christian character in 
the average member of their congregations. 
' Too few new converts, too many light 
and dwarfed Christians " — is not this the 
accusation that might fairly be written on 



122 The Minister as Shepherd 

the wall of many a parish ? The work that 
pastors do in these rigorous, exacting days 
must be finer and closer, more intelligent 
and scientific, more faithful and painstak- 
ing, more personal and delicate, than has 
been much of the work in the past. Shep- 
herding work — knowing every sheep by 
name, giving every sheep a chance to know 
the shepherd — this is the direction in which 
an awakened church is bound to move. 

The other idea, conservation, has risen 
to prominence because of the passion for 
efficiency. It is because men are severely 
practical and demand larger results, that 
the thought of waste has become unendur- 
able. Economy has become a watchword 
among the nations of the earth. How can 
we utilize waste products? How can we 
bring into service the energy which is now 
squandered? How can we husband the 
forces which are running to waste? That 
is the question which all alert men every- 
where are asking. The world's population 
is increasing, a deal of work must be done. 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 123 

All our resources are needed. We cannot 
afford to let our treasures go to waste. 
The nation is setting an example to all our 
people. She is surveying her swamps, and 
asking how they may be converted into 
fertile farms. She is measuring her des- 
erts, and laying plans to irrigate them. She 
is computing the value of her forests and 
taking measures to prevent their destruc- 
tion. The various commonwealths are esti- 
mating the power of their water-falls, and 
calculating the work which it may do. Men 
looked with envy on Niagara until they got 
out of it both power and light. They now 
look with envy on the tides, and the ques- 
tion to-day is how to make the Atlantic 
work for us, creating our light and our 
heat. The material resources are being 
scanned with an economic eye, and are be- 
ing used with a more thrifty and a more 
frugal hand. It is in its treatment of hu- 
man life, however, that the genius of our 
age is best exemplified. What a host of 
experts are working on the problem of 



124 The Minister as Shepherd 

feeding and nutrition, health and disease. 
Human life has been hitherto wasted horri- 
bly. Thousands of lives have been sacri- 
ficed to the incompetency of government, 
tens of thousands to the ignorance of in- 
dividuals. The world is awakening to the 
value of life. The awful death rate among 
infants is not according to the will of God. 
The babies have not been cared for prop- 
erly, and that is why so many of them have 
died. It is not God's good pleasure that 
disease should fill our cemeteries with pre- 
mature graves. Cities are making war on 
the death rate. Already it has been re- 
duced amazingly. In great laboratories of 
research on both sides the sea men are 
studying food values, and are grading arti- 
cles of diet according to their energy-pro- 
ducing power. They are mastering the art 
of warding off disease. Prophylaxis, or 
the art of preventing disease, has come to 
the front; and a new class of medicines, 
the prophylactics, have taken the prece- 
dence of all others. The surgeon's knife 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 125 

was once deadly to an extent which now 
appals us, but antiseptics have made the 
majority of surgical operations safe. Spe- 
cialists are now at work to discover how to 
hasten the processes of recuperation and 
to bring health more swiftly to tissues 
which have been ravaged by disease. The 
present age is interested in life, physical 
life, the life of the body, to a degree never 
before known. We are just beginning to 
learn how to live. The length of life is 
increasing. Men were once old at sixty — 
multitudes are not old now at seventy. The 
day is coming when men who obey the laws 
of God will not be old at eighty. If we 
cannot add a cubit to our stature, we can 
add at least a span to our earthly life by 
knowing how to live. 

Here is the pastor's opportunity to gath- 
er hints for his own improvement in the art 
of saving souls. It is not necessary that 
so much spiritual energy should be wasted, 
it is not God's will that so many souls 
should die. Medicine has given us a clew. 



126 The Minister as Shepherd 

The modern physician is nothing if not in- 
dividualistic. Physicians never deal with 
men in crowds. " One patient at a time " — 
that is the rule in all hospitals throughout 
the world. Each patient has his own chart 
at the head of his bed. The temperature 
of his blood, the beat of his pulse, the 
number of his respirations are carefully 
noted. Each patient has his own diet, his 
special remedies, and his particular kind of 
nursing. It is this sleepless vigilance, this 
jealous guardianship, this minuteness of 
observation and delicate accuracy of treat- 
ment of the individual man which has filled 
the modern world with miracles, and given 
the physicians of the body their unparal- 
leled prestige. It is not by spectacular and 
scenic methods that the death rate of great 
cities is reduced, but by the loving care 
of the one baby, the faithful nursing of 
the one patient who without this care and 
nursing would have died. The same policy 
adopted in our parishes would bring equal- 
ly astonishing results. Under our present 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 127 

system vast volumes of energy go to waste. 
Christian men and women are filled with 
energy, but in many cases the energy turns 
no wheels. There is in every parish a 
Niagara of moral force which creates 
neither heat nor light. There is in every 
parish desert land which would blossom as 
a rose if it were irrigated by an engineer's 
skill. There are swamps which could be 
drained if only the necessary knowledge 
and genius were at hand. There are in 
every parish three classes of people whose 
life is now running largely to waste. First, 
the inactive christians; second, the publi- 
cans and sinners; third, the Samaritans. 
These are the three classes upon which the 
shepherd must bestow peculiar and con- 
stant care. An inactive Christian is, of 
course, lost. What matters it whether his 
name is on the church book if he does noth- 
ing for the advancement of God's king- 
dom? The publicans and sinners are apos- 
tates, those who have slipped down into 
open estrangement from the church. The 



128 The Minister as Shepherd 

Samaritans are just outside the parish, 
earthy and heretical, and yet in God's plan 
Samaria is always a part of the promised 
land. The shepherds of the Jewish church 
before Jesus came had allowed all three 
classes to slip away from them. Multi- 
tudes of Jews were mere formalists, lack- 
ing the life of the spirit; others had be- 
come utterly hopeless in the eyes of the 
shepherds; while Samaria was counted ac- 
cursed, her people unfit to associate with, 
and her very existence a vexation to the 
pious Hebrew heart. When the Good Shep- 
herd arrived he understood his business. 
He at once proceeded to make use of all 
three classes. He sent idlers into the vine- 
yard. He laid hold of the publicans and 
sinners, one of whom, Matthew, he placed 
on a throne, and even of Samaria he said : 
" Lift up your eyes and look at the fields— 
they are white already unto the harvest." 
To him who looks upon the world with 
Jesus' eyes there are no hopeless deserts, 
no irreclaimable swamps, nor is there any 



The Shepherd's Opportunity 129 

Samaria which cannot be made a part of 
the Holy Land. Jesus was master of the 
method for transforming human nature, 
and his was the pastoral method. He made 
his way into the Sanhedrim through the 
soul of one old man. He touched the 
hearts of all publicans the day he befriend- 
ed one of them, and he broke the hard 
heart of Samaria simply by being kind to 
one Samaritan woman. 

It is when we see that the work of the 
Christian church is work on the individual, 
that no parish, however limited in territory, 
seems really small. There is an unimagi- 
nable amount of work to be done in every 
parish. Young men ought not to feel that 
their life is thrown away because they can- 
not preach great sermons before a crowd. 
Get rid of the oratorical conception of the 
ministry, and put in its place the pastoral 
idea. You ought not to turn your back 
upon a parish because it seems dull and 
dead. What parish could have been duller, 
stupider, and more hopeless than the valley 



130 The Minister as Shepherd 

of the Vosges before Oberlin took hold of 
it? What parish could have been more 
irreligious, reprobate, and godless than Kid- 
derminster before Baxter gave his great 
heart to it? Never believe that there is a 
parish on the earth, however desolate or 
demon possessed, that cannot be made to 
blossom with the flowers of paradise un- 
der the summer warmth created by a shep- 
herd's care. 



IV 

The Shepherd's Temptations 

They are many. Let us look at but two. 
These two are singled out because they are 
the two against which our Lord and two 
of his Apostles uttered special and repeated 
warnings, and because the experience of 
nineteen hundred years has demonstrated 
that these two are most insidious, most 
constant, and most fatal. They are the 
love of gain and the love of power : covet- 
ousness and ambition, inordinate desire to 
possess for personal gratification, and an 
unlawful love of advancement, prominence, 
authority. Christian history makes i* clear 
that these are the cardinal sins which ever 
lie like crouching beasts at the shepherd's 
door. 

Covetousness is often associated in our 
mind with money, and it seems absurd to 
131 



132 The Minister as Shepherd 

say that one of the two besetting sins of 
the minister is an inordinate love of money. 
The world is always ready to accuse the 
minister of this, probably because the aver- 
age man is himself so susceptible to the 
alluring power of gold. One of the tra- 
ditional taunts hurled at the minister is — 
" the bigger the salary the louder the call. ,, 
A layman, no matter how great a saint, 
may exchange one position for another, if 
by so doing he increases his income without 
the sacrifice of important interests, but this 
in a minister is by many people counted 
reprehensible, even positively disgraceful. 
There is in many quarters a jealous solici- 
tude lest ministers get more money than 
they ought to have, and think more highly 
of their salary than they ought to think. 

But this accusation is not justified. Min- 
isters, as a rule, are not abnormally fond 
of money. No other set of men in all the 
world think so little about it, or care so 
little for it. That a man is in the ministry 
is presumptuous evidence that he does not 



The Shepherd's Temptations 133 

worship the golden calf. What a dunce a 
man would be to go into the ministry for 
the sake of making money. Is not the 
average minister's salary pitifully small, 
and are not thousands of salaries a dis- 
grace to the church ? Every man who goes 
into the ministry takes, in reality, the vow 
of poverty. He turns his back on all the 
avenues which lead to wealth. He sur- 
renders all hope of ever becoming a rich 
man. No man in this country has ever 
become rich in money by his service as a 
minister. Occasionally a minister comes 
into possession of wealth, but it is not 
through his salary as a pastor of a church. 
There is only the smallest fraction of min- 
isters whose salaries are large, and these 
few are large to meet the extravagant ex- 
pensiveness of living in great cities. When, 
therefore, the critics accuse ministers of 
having an itching palm, they deal in cal- 
umny. That in this money-loving, money- 
seeking, money-crazy country a multitude 
of young men are every year turning their 



134 The Minister as Shepherd 

backs on the glittering financial inducements 
held out by other callings and dedicating 
themselves to a profession which dooms 
them to be poor, is one of the sublimest 
phenomena of our century, and an indis- 
putable proof that the spirit of God is still 
among us. 

But covetousness does not necessarily 
mean love of money. It is an excessive de- 
sire for anything which gratifies one's own 
cravings. It is the disposition for having 
and for getting. Money is not the only 
thing which can be had or gotten, and 
the very fact that money is shut out from 
the possible acquisitions of the minister, 
possibly makes him more covetous for 
those things which do lie within his reach. 
Covetousness is a part of our unregenerate 
human nature, and if it cannot exert it- 
self in one direction it endeavors to make 
conquests in another. When one speaks of 
the salary of the minister, he should not 
stop with the sum of money which the 
minister annually receives. Money is only 



The Shepherd's Temptations 135 

one clement in the minister's annual sti- 
pend. He is paid money, and also grati- 
tude, and praise, and applause, and ad- 
miration. He is given not only dollars, but 
social privileges and positions which are 
worth more to a man of culture than bank- 
notes. He has opportunities for study and 
self-cultivation, for meditation, and for 
those quiet pursuits in which the studious 
nature takes delight. Compensations come 
to him which are more valuable than ru- 
bies, satisfactions subtle and sweet are his 
which the man of the world knows noth- 
ing about. While in one sense the minister 
is the poorest-paid man in the community, 
in another sense no man is so generously 
rewarded. The minister who is really 
called of God to lead men in the way of 
life has a remuneration which cannot be 
computed in the terms of our earthly arith- 
metic, and which he would not exchange 
for the income of the highest-salaried man 
in the town. 

It is right here, then, that the pastor 



136 The Minister as Shepherd 

meets one of his two most dangerous temp- 
tations. He is tempted to make himself 
the center of the parish, and like a mediae- 
val Baron exact illicit tribute from the 
people. A Puritan preacher once declared 
that " a covetous person lives as if the 
world were made altogether for him, and 
not he for the world. " Are there no min- 
isters who, according to this definition, are 
covetous? Do they not often think and 
act as though the parish were made for 
them? Men sometimes come out of the 
seminary with no conception of Christian 
servantship, no idea that the church is to be 
first always, no notion that the church does 
not exist for the pastor but that the pastor 
exists for the church. There is nothing 
more dismaying than the tone of the talk 
in which some ministers indulge. They 
confess quite blandly that they are looking 
for a church that will pay them a living 
salary while they carry out a cherished 
plan. The church they are looking for 
must be in a certain locality, must pay a 



The Shepherd's Temptations 137 

certain salary, must have a certain kind of 
parsonage, and must be made up of a cer- 
tain type of people. Sometimes ministers 
speak of their personal schemes, unabashed 
and without a blush, and go into their first 
parish with no other thought uppermost in 
their mind but that of their own personal 
advantage. When such a man gets a 
church, the tragedy begins. He lays out a 
line of study according to his own taste. 
He delves in fields to which his intellectual 
proclivities carry him. He finishes certain 
investigations, perhaps, which were begun 
in the school. He gives himself to sundry 
branches of philosophy or science for which 
he has a liking. As for the people, who are 
they? They ought to be satisfied with any- 
thing. Every sermon has something in it, 
and it is the business of laymen to find 
what that something is. Sunday after Sun- 
day the hungry sheep look up and are not 
fed. The minister is working, perhaps, for 
a postgraduate degree; he is, possibly, lay- 
ing up material for a coming book. He is 



138 The Minister as Shepherd 

a greedy, selfish man, and his people droop 
and die. The physician has come. The 
patients are before him, but he does not 
study their diseases. He is experimenting 
in the laboratory with some new serums 
and cultures. The sheep are waiting to be 
guided and fed, but he fleeces them simply 
to clothe himself. If his conscience is 
thoroughly dead, he uses the church solely 
as a base of supplies. He goes into the 
lecture business, or some other form of 
remunerative occupation, allowing his peo- 
ple to pay him for work which he does not 
do. While he is building up his fame and 
fortune, souls whom God has entrusted 
to his guidance are left to the mercy of the 
wolves, and noble causes which might by 
his leadership be carried to their coronation 
are permitted to languish and fail. A 
church going to pieces through sheer neg- 
lect while its appointed leader is dabbling 
in outside ventures is a spectacle which 
brings pain to the heart of every true lover 
of God, and must cause anguish among the 



The Shepherd's Temptations 139 

angels in heaven. Sometimes the church is 
used simply as a stepping-stone to some- 
thing better. A minister goes into a parish 
with no desire to extend Christ's kingdom 
there, but solely for the purpose of step- 
ping at the earliest opportunity from that 
parish into one more nearly level with his 
deserts. Such men are, as a rule, egre- 
giously conceited. Covetousness is a soil in 
which all sorts of briers and brambles 
grow. If the poison of covetousness flows 
in a man's blood, there is no limit to the 
foolish things he will think and do. By 
brooding on himself, he generates an ab- 
normal estimate of his worth. Nothing is 
too good for him. He thinks the highest 
pulpit in the land hardly worthy of him. 
He is always aspiring to churches forever 
beyond him. He thinks he is going to be 
called by committees who have never once 
thought of him, and never will. His dreams 
are pitiable and also disgusting. This is 
one of the elements in the awful retribu- 
tion which God inflicts on those who pro- 



140 The Minister as Shepherd 

f ess to follow in the steps of Jesus, and 
who are really living solely for themselves. 
Throughout the country there are, here and 
there, sour and disgruntled ministers, their 
hearts in constant ferment, all because they 
have been denied that recognition which in 
their opinion their shining merits indispu- 
tably deserve. They speak with scorn of 
" favored brethren " who without half 
their intellectual resources, and with only a 
fraction of their merit, have by means of 
influential friends or chance, or possibly 
the devil, succeeded in outstripping them. 
" Put to death covetousness," says the 
apostle Paul, " it is idolatry." The idolatry 
of self always leads to hell, and never so 
swiftly as when the sinner is a minister. 

Covetousness leads to conceit, and also 
to vanity. Every human being has in his 
heart a peacock, and the peacock is ever 
hungering after crumbs. The covetous 
man feeds the peacock in him all the time. 
People praise his sermons, and this praise 
makes him voracious for more praise. 



The Shepherd's Temptations 141 

They compliment his voice, or his memory, 
or his beautiful diction, and this wakens an 
appetite which, growing by what it feeds 
on, is never satisfied. This abnormal love 
of praise is in reality a form of covetous- 
ness. It is a sort of avarice which is as 
fatal as the greed for money. Praiseful 
words are coins, and some men itch and 
burn for them as other men do for silver 
and gold. Sometimes this disease makes 
such progress that the poor man becomes 
an object of ridicule in the parish. He 
seeks habitually for compliments, and every 
man whose heart is sound secretly despises 
him. The last man of all men upon the 
earth who ought to hunger after the sugar 
of popular commendation is the minister of 
Jesus of Nazareth. If the applause-seek- 
ing brother were not spiritually dead, he 
would hear a voice saying : " How can you 
believe who receive honor from men, and 
seek not the honor which comes from God 
only?" 

Covetousness has still another sprout — 



142 The Minister as Shepherd 

carelessness. A man who thinks too much 
about himself has not sufficient time to give 
thought to others. Self is a big subject, 
and when one goes into it, there is no get- 
ting through with it. The covetous man 
is sure to become neglectful of those 
forms of work which are distinctively pas- 
toral. Ministering in the homes of the sick 
and the poor, work that involves quiet and 
obscure labor which no one but God sees, 
it is here that the covetous minister shows 
what manner of man he is. There are many 
duties which a minister cannot escape. No 
matter how covetous he may be, he will 
attend to these, for these make for his 
advantage. He cannot stay away from a 
wedding, or absent himself from a fu- 
neral, or remain at home from a prayer 
meeting, or go off on a visit over Sunday. 
Public duties hold him as in a vise. The 
worst of men will do things which are for 
their profit, but it is in the doing or not 
doing of private duties that a minister's 
true self is disclosed. If he be selfish, he 



The Shepherd's Temptations 143 

need not go to-day to call on the woman 
who is ill, he can go to-morrow. The 
world will not know. If she dies to-night, 
she will never tell that he did not come. 
He need not go out of his way to comfort 
a man who lost his only son last month. 
An omission of that sort never gets into 
the papers. The outsider living without 
hope and without God in the world has no 
open claim on him, and the claim of the 
last magazine is imperious, and therefore 
he can give time to the magazine to the 
neglect of the outsider. Looking up a mem- 
ber of his church who has grown negligent 
is not so congenial a task as many another. 
The wandering sheep does not want to be 
looked after. Why pester him with pas- 
toral attention? The town will go on just 
the same with one sheep less in the fold. 
A bad boy who is breaking his mother's 
heart needs a bit of admonition, but if he 
does not get it, he will not divulge the 
pastor's neglect. A hundred little things 
ought to be attended to, but every little 



144 The Minister as Shepherd 

thing eats up energy and time, and even 
though these little things are really impor- 
tant things in the lives of human beings, 
they are matters that can be omitted with- 
out the minister being called to account. 
It makes a vast difference in the tone and 
trend of parish life whether the minister is 
faithful in that which is little, or whether 
he devotes himself solely to the things 
which are conspicuous and big. A con- 
siderable part of pastoral work can be 
slighted without the lightning falling. Many 
of the finest and most critical things can 
be neglected without bringing the minister 
to open shame; but when a pastor allows 
things to run at loose ends in his parish, 
and is careless in his response to obscure 
but vital needs, he may win golden opin- 
ions from many sorts of people, but he 
rests under the condemnation of the Good 
Shepherd. 

Covetousness also manifests itself often 
in cowardice. A covetous man, as a rule, 
runs at the sight of a wolf. A man careful 



The Shepherd's Temptations 145 

of himself has no fondness for danger. He 
will save himself, whosoever else may be 
lost. A crisis arises in the parish and he 
hands in his resignation. Enemies of the 
flock have appeared, and in the hour when 
the people most need guidance, the leader 
abdicates his position. A great moral ques- 
tion is at issue, but he is afraid to come 
out boldly for the truth and the right. 
When skies were blue he seemed brave 
enough, but when the storm burst he was 
the first to seek cover. In days of peace 
he blew a furious blast calling the cohorts 
to battle, but when the enemy appeared he 
slunk ignominiously from the field. This 
was because he was a covetous man. He 
was abnormally fond of his own skin. 
Covetousness is one of the most subtle and 
deceitful of all sins. One does not know 
how covetous he is until tested. The finest 
test of covetousness is the open mouth of 
the wolf. In the flash of the fire of a 
wolf's eyes a man's soul is startlingly re- 
vealed. The man with a covetous heart 



146 The Minister as Shepherd 

is everywhere and always a coward. When 
he sees the wolf coming, he flees. 

It would be impossible to paint with 
colors too black the enormity of the sin 
of covetousness in the envoys of the Son 
of God. Nothing is so destructive of the 
Christian faith as a selfish minister. There 
are laymen whose faith has been destroyed 
forever by the unworthiness of their pas- 
tor. They once had confidence high and 
glad in Christian ministers, and were fore- 
most workers in the church, and then, alas, 
one day there came a minister who, preach- 
ing with his lips the gospel of unselfishness, 
hid behind his preaching the rank corrup- 
tion of an avaricious spirit. Little by little 
it became revealed that the minister was 
working for himself, that the welfare of 
the parish was not in all his thoughts. And 
when the crisis came he sacrificed the 
parish to secure his own advancement. 
When laymen have at their head a covetous 
leader, they oftentimes say nothing — they 
sicken spiritually and die. They lose their 
faith in their minister, and then their faith 



The Shepherd's Temptations 147 

in all ministers. They lose their interest in 
their church, and finally in all churches. 
Woe to the minister who by his selfish 
heart not only loses heaven himself but 
closes the door so that others cannot en- 
ter — he is the worst man in the parish, he 
is worse than a robber. A robber may 
wrong his victim, and still retain a cer- 
tain sense of honor. Robbery may be his 
business, and with open face he may ac- 
knowledge his unwillingness to be an hon- 
est man. But a minister who lives for self 
is not only a robber but a sneak. He pre- 
tends to live for others, and if under his 
pretense he lives solely for himself, he is 
the most despicable of all extant rascals. 
He is the steward of heavenly treasures, 
and if he looks out mainly for himself, he 
is recreant to the highest trust which God 
commits to men. He is a leading citizen 
of the heavenly Jerusalem, and if at the ex- 
pense of others he works for his personal 
aggrandizement, he is a traitor to the king- 
dom of God. 
He is also a blasphemer. He blasphemes 



148 The Minister as Shepherd 

himself, and he causes others to blaspheme. 
He becomes the thing which the Son of 
God abhorred with all the intensity of his 
infinitely pure and honest heart, a hypo- 
crite — a wolf in sheep's clothing. 

Jesus has a name for the covetous 
* preacher. He calls him a hireling. " A 
hireling," he says, " is not a shepherd at 
all." He lacks the shepherd's heart, and 
he cannot do the shepherd's work. A hire- 
ling is a man who works exclusively for pay, 
his eyes are ever on his wages, his deep- 
est motive is gain. He is always counting 
up his profits. His god is self. It is amaz- 
ing how the breath of Jesus has glorified 
certain words forever. " Servant," for in- 
stance, has never been the same since Jesus 
spoke it, nor has " love." He gave some 
words a luster which will outlast the stars. 
Other words, however, he tarnished, and 
left them to make their way down the 
centuries disgraced and branded. One 
such word is " hypocrite," another is " hire- 
ling." One cannot speak the word " hire- 



The Shepherd's Temptations 149 

ling " free from the accent which Jesus 
gave it. We cannot make it a sweet and 
adorning word. We cannot lift it to the 
seats of the respectable. It is a degraded 
word, and when we wish to condemn a 
man, we call him a hireling. He is a man \ 
whose heart is not in his work. He does 
it solely for what he expects to get out of 
it. Jesus sketches the robber and the hire- 
ling side by side in his shepherd allegory. *k 
But there is no doubt for which of the 
two men he had the deeper abhorrence. 
One can almost catch the scorching hiss of 
moral detestation in this sentence : " He 
fleeth because* he is a hireling, and careth 
not for the sheep." 

It is noteworthy that Peter in his in- 
structions to shepherds should warn them 
against the sin of covetousness. " Tend the 
flock of God not for filthy lucre, but with 
a ready mind." The exhortation must have 
been called for by something which the 
apostle saw in the lives of church officials. 
Already that sly serpent covetousness had 



150 The Minister as Shepherd 

crawled into the garden of the Lord, and 
was working havoc in the hearts of the 
Lord's anointed. It is equally striking that 
Paul in his pastoral address to the elders 
of Ephesus should say this : " I coveted 
no man's silver or gold or apparel. Ye well 
know that these hands ministered unto my 
necessities, and to them that were with me. 
In all things I gave you an example, that 
so laboring ye ought to help the weak, and 
to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, 
that he himself said, It is more blessed 
to give than to receive." In his first letter 
to Timothy, Paul lays it down as one of the 
essential qualifications of a bishop, or shep- 
herd, that he shall be no lover of money. 
By money we are to understand every 
earthly thing which men count a treasure. 
There were in apostolic days no comfort- 
able parsonages, no delightful studies, no 
richly filled bookshelves, no ministerial dis- 
counts, no famous pulpits, no eulogizing 
organizations, no fawning society, no ap- 
plauding world. Ministers were reviled, 



The Shepherd's Temptations 151 

persecuted, defamed, made as the filth of 
the world, the offscouring of all things. 
There was only one earthly blessing which 
it was possible for them to covet, and that 
was money. Do not set your heart on it — 
pleaded Peter and Paul. And if they were 
speaking to ministers to-day they would 
say : " Do not set your heart on the earth- 
ly advantages which are offered by the min- 
isterial office, time for study, quiet for 
meditation, opportunity for self-culture, 
compliments of women, gratitude of men, 
applause of the world; do not make 
these the burden of your heart's desire." 
And the Master would add : " Beware of 
covetousness. A man's life consists not 
in the abundance of the things which he 
possesses." 

But the love of things is not more deep- 
seated or destructive than is the love of 
power. The love of power is innate in the 
soul of man. The man is maimed who 
does not have it. All virile and vigorous 
men are ambitious. It would be strange 



152 The Minister as Shepherd 

if ministers of the gospel had no ambition. 
The love of prominence, the craving for 
distinction, the desire for exalted rank, 
these are deep-seated instincts in our hu- 
man nature, and a course of study in the- 
ology does not eliminate them. Like all 
the native appetites of the soul they may 
become abnormal, bringing to their victims 
suffering and death. No other sin has 
wrought such havoc among the ministers 
of Christ as the inordinate love of place 
and power. What is the story of a thou- 
sand years of church history but the tragic 
narrative of how the ministers of Christ, 
little by little, compacted themselves into a 
hierarchy which became at last the most 
blighting and intolerable despotism that 
the world has ever known? The tyr- 
anny of the mediaeval church was the tyr- 
anny of clergymen. Laymen were crowded 
out of the place appointed them by the 
church's founder. Reduced to mere spec- 
tators, they had no voice whatever in the 
government of the church, all authority be- 



The Shepherd's Temptations 153 

ing gathered up into the hands of ecclesias- 
tics, who, rising rank above rank, formed 
a compact organization culminating in one 
supreme head who claimed authority trans- 
cending that of the mightiest of the Caesars, 
and whose agents, distributed throughout 
the world, lorded it over the consciences of 
men, gathering into their clutches all the 
kingdoms of life. It is the supreme tragedy 
of Christian history that this ecclesiastical 
passion for power in the mediaeval church 
brought a disgrace upon the cause of Christ 
from which it will not recover for another 
thousand years. The whole world suffers 
to-day because of what mediaeval clergy- 
men did. The cause of Christ is hampered 
everywhere because of the prejudice plant- 
ed in the human heart by the imperious and 
high-handed policy of the ambitious lead- 
ers of the Church of Rome. The stories of 
that tyranny are the property of all man- 
kind. Wherever the name of Jesus is 
preached, the enemies of Jesus unroll the 
record of the ambition and cruelty and 



154 The Minister as Shepherd 

despotism of the ordained ministers of 
Jesus, and thereby close the hearts of many. 
With the history of the church open before 
him, every young man preparing for the 
ministry has a warning which he should 
heed as coming straight from heaven. 
Those clergymen of bygone days were men 
of like passions with ourselves. They did 
not start out intending to disgrace and ruin 
the church of God. They were not con- 
scienceless enemies of Christ. They had 
good reasons for formulating their plausible 
policies, and they were able by specious rea- 
soning to justify all they did. They were 
not wholly depraved and reprobate. In 
their hearts was many a noble aspiration, 
and in their generation they did many no- 
ble deeds. But, alas, ambition, the sin by 
which the angels fell, gradually darkened 
the mind of the clergy and led it into 
courses which wellnigh wrecked the world. 
We are Protestants and have broken away 
from the despotism of Rome. We rejoice 
and call ourselves free men in Christ, we 



The Shepherd's Temptations 155 

believe in the priesthood of believers, in the 
brotherhood of the Lord's disciples. We 
recognize the danger of church hierarchies, 
we are on our guard against every increase 
of ecclesiastical authority, we know that 
the minister of Christ, if dominated by the- 
ories of priestcraft, is the most dangerous 
enemy which humanity has to face. And 
yet while thus open-eyed to historic facts 
and teachings, we may be blind to the evil 
forces working in our own hearts. Self- 
assertion, lordly pretension, autocratic tem- 
per are not confined to any one branch of 
the Christian church. Protestantism has 
not escaped entirely the despotism and the 
ways of Rome. The old virus still runs 
in human blood, and to-day, as always, the 
old injunction is timely : " If any man 
thinks he stands, let him take heed." We 
cannot play the monarch in the splendid 
and dashing way of the mediaeval bishop, 
but it is possible for a Protestant minister 
to be as insolent as the lordliest of Car- 
dinals, and as despotic as the most tyran- 



156 The Minister as Shepherd 

nical of Popes. If one were to go up and 
down our Protestant world, noting care- 
fully the sins of clergymen, would he not 
write down in his list such as these: 
autocratic manner, imperious temper, con- 
sequential air, dictatorial disposition, self- 
assertion, hankering after distinction, am- 
bition for higher place, arrogant presump- 
tion, refined but earthy lordliness? Every 
man has in him the elements out of which 
Rome built a despotism which enslaved the 
world. 

It is worth noting how many things con- 
spire to develop in the minister a proud 
and imperious disposition. His relation to 
Christ the Son of God, the consciousness 
that he is the ambassador of the King of 
kings, tends to give him a sense of dignity 
which may easily pass into a vice. The 
fact that he is entrusted with the oracles 
of God, and is ordained to minister in holy 
things, separates him from men engaged 
in secular occupations, and this, if dwelt 
on, has a tendency to beget the feeling, " I 



The Shepherd's Temptations 157 

am holier than thou." One wonders, some- 
times, how much the shepherd metaphor 
may be to blame for the exaggerated no- 
tions of ministerial prerogative. A meta- 
phor, like every other good thing, is al- 
ways dangerous. It may be carried too 
far. The shepherd idea, if rightly used, is 
illuminating, but if abused it is false and 
dangerous. It can be construed in such a 
way as to imply that laymen are weak and 
silly creatures, while clergymen are won- 
derful beings endowed with supernatural 
powers, enjoying unique and exclusive fa- 
vors from heaven. Never did Jesus use 
the word " sheep " in a depreciatory or dis- 
paraging sense. He called little children 
" lambs " because lamb is a love name for 
a child. He called grown people " sheep " 
because the word was dear to Hebrew ears, 
and his countrymen had been singing for 
centuries : " We are his people, and the 
sheep of his pasture." Literally speaking, 
men are not sheep at all. They do not be- 
long to an order of creation lower than that 



158 The Minister as Shepherd 

to which the shepherd belongs. The life 
of pastor and people is on the same level. 
There is no gulf between the minister and 
his flock. Pastor and people are members 
of the same family. They have the same 
natures and the same privileges. All alike 
have free access to the throne of grace, all 
alike are redeemed by the Son of God, all 
alike are heirs of immortality. It is possi- 
ble, however, for ministers so to use the 
shepherd metaphor as to exalt themselves 
at the expense of the laity, and to set up 
pretensions which are expressly ruled out 
by the Good Shepherd. 

Whatever the influence of the shepherd 
metaphor may have been, there is no doubt 
the nature of the preacher's work has a 
tendency to feed his love of rulership and 
to quicken his appetite for absolute domin- 
ion. What liberty a minister enjoys in the 
disposition of his time ! No other man but 
the retired millionaire is such a monarch 
of his day as is the minister. He can read 
on Monday morning, or write, or walk, or 



The Shepherd's Temptations 159 

mingle all three, just as he deems best. On 
Tuesday morning he can attend to his cor- 
respondence, or catalogue his library, or 
eat the heart out of some new book, or 
meet a company of friends, just as he de- 
cides. The order of his going out and 
coming in is largely at his own discretion. 
Within wide limits he is the monarch of all 
the hours he surveys. Such liberty is dan- 
gerous, it has spoiled its thousands. His 
dominion over his sermons is still more 
wonderful. He is free to say what the text 
shall be, the topic, the illustrations, the 
arguments, the conclusion, and no one can 
interfere. He can adopt any style of 
preaching that he likes, he can follow what- 
ever line of thought he chooses. A mer- 
chant has to give his customers what they 
ask for, a hotel-keeper must supply what his 
guests desire, but a preacher can give what 
he thinks his hearers ought to want and 
ought to have, no matter what their needs 
and wishes really are. For half an hour 
or more every Sunday morning everything 



160 The Minister as Shepherd 

is silent while he speaks. This unparalleled 
immunity from the noises and interruptions 
and contradictions which other men are 
subject to, begets in certain types of men a 
tone of mind which says : " I am Sir 
Oracle, and when I ope my lips, let no dog 
bark." In social life a minister is ever at 
the front. He is the observed of all ob- 
servers. Wherever he sits is the head of 
the table. He has his critics and detractors, 
but they are not visible at social functions. 
In social life, especially in small towns, 
there is a deference paid to ministers which 
no other man receives. This burning of 
incense before the minister has a tendency, 
in many cases, to turn his head, and to lead 
him to think more highly of himself than 
he ought to think. Is there a celebration 
in the town, the minister must attend it ; is 
the fitting word to be spoken on a state 
occasion, the minister must speak it. Here 
is a true description of ministers not a few : 
" They love the chief places at feasts and 
the chief seats in the synagogues, and the 



The Shepherd's Temptations 161 

salutations in the market-places, and to be 
called of men, Rabbi. " They love these 
things because they are human and because 
they are accustomed to them, and because 
they think they have a right to them. Con- 
stant deference and obedience have a ten- 
dency to beget in men of a certain grade a 
haughty and unlovely disposition. 

But mightiest of all the forces working 
for the undoing of the minister's heart is 
the liberty he has in devising and shaping 
the policy of the church. Laymen, as a 
rule, are too busy to take continued interest 
in church affairs. The result is that in 
many parishes almost everything is rolled 
upon the pastor's shoulders. Is a change 
to be made, he must make it ; is a new work 
to be undertaken, he must start it; is there 
a fresh responsibility to be assumed, the 
pastor must shoulder it. In a multitude of 
parishes the minister must not only preach 
and conduct the prayer meeting, and make 
all the pastoral calls, but he must also su- 
perintend the Sunday School, manage the 



162 The Minister as Shepherd 

finances, map out the work of every organi- 
zation, and possibly act even as leader of 
the singing. No wonder that .ministers 
come to feel sometimes that they are of 
considerable importance. It was in this 
way that church government blossomed 
into Romanism. The laity in the early 
Christian centuries were largely ignorant, 
incompetent, and indifferent, and the whole 
shaping and managing of the church fell 
inevitably into the hands of its clerical offi- 
cials. Laymen in our day are not ignorant 
or incompetent, but .many of them are in- 
different because they are so busy. They 
have no time to bother with church affairs. 
Church administration is left, therefore, 
largely in the hands of the pastor. This is 
bad for him, and it is bad also for the 
church. It makes it easier for the minister 
to build up in himself a dictatorial dispo- 
sition and to nourish in his heart the love of 
autocratic power. 

Note some of the ways in which this 
lordliness of temper shows itself. It is 



The Shepherd's Temptations 163 

manifested sometimes in the tone of the 
sermon. Many preachers preach with an 
overbearing, dictatorial air. They assume 
that their congregation is a stiff-necked, 
rebellious generation, and they proceed to 
ram the truth down the people's throats. 
They talk too loud. There is too much 
push in their voices. I do not mean that a 
minister is never to speak loud. If he has 
a great voice, he has a right to let it out 
in thunder when the thought flashes and 
his emotions rise in tempest. But bellowing 
simply for the sake of making a noise is 
always bad. There is often an excess of 
the magisterial, and not enough of the 
friendly. There is too much omniscience, 
and not enough of the humility which Jesus 
loves. Truth to go in, need not be driven 
in. Sledge-hammers are not essential for 
the introduction of ideas. Keats once 
said, " Poetry should be great but unob- 
trusive." So ought a sermon. It ought 
to be great, but it ought not to obtrude it- 
self. If men go away saying, " That was a 



164 The Minister as Shepherd 

great sermon," it falls short of the ideal. 
When men listened to Demosthenes they 
did not go off saying, " That was a great 
oration." They said, " Let us march against 
Philip." There are preachers who by the 
expression of their face, the poise of their 
body, and the character of their gestures 
say quite plainly: "This is God's truth! 
Do not dare to deny it ! Take it! Take the 
whole of it! Take it immediately!! By 
the Eternal, I will make you take it ! ! ! " It 
is not necessary to put grass into the sheep's 
mouth. Cram the grass down the sheep's 
throat, and the animal is so flustered he 
will not eat at all. Put the grass within 
reach of the sheep, and he will eat it him- 
self. So it is with truth. Hold it up so 
that people can plainly see it; bring it 
within comfortable reach of them; give 
them time to get at it; and they will eat it. 
Charles Lamb used to say that " the truth 
of a poem ought to slide into the mind of 
the reader while the reader is imagining no 
such thing." The truth of the sermon 



The Shepherd's Temptations 165 

ought to glide into the mind of the hearer 
without the hearer really knowing what is 
going on. It is not an encouraging sign 
when men go away saying, " What a tre- 
mendous fellow that is! What a mighty 
effort that was ! " It is better when they 
think nothing of the preacher, but go away 
with a heart disquieted by the memory of 
things they have done amiss, and teased by 
the haunting image of a bright ideal; a 
heavenly perfume hanging round their 
spirit as sweet as that which filled the room 
in which Mary broke the alabaster cruse 
upon the Master's head. Dictators are out 
of place in the pulpit. Dictatorship is a 
form of carnal striving after power. 

This ecclesiastical lordliness shows itself 
sometimes in the tone of condescension 
with which opponents are dealt with, and 
the haughty insolence with which skeptics 
are brushed aside. The supercilious and 
scornful ease with which unbelieving phi- 
losophers and materialistic scientists are 
attacked and overwhelmed by young men, 



166 The Minister as Shepherd 

and old men too, in the pulpit, is a sad ex- 
hibition of an unchristian spirit. The fact 
that these opponents of the Christian faith 
cannot be present to make reply, lays upon 
the minister an extra responsibility to be 
scrupulously fair in all his quotations, and 
beautifully just in all his judgments. To 
rush furiously upon the ideas of a famous 
and learned man who is hundreds of miles 
away and hold these ideas up to coarse and 
flippant ridicule when the man can neither 
explain nor defend himself, is not the ac- 
tion of a gentleman. 

It is the same spirit which exhibits itself 
in the vociferous defense of orthodoxy. 
Every minister is of course under bonds to 
proclaim and defend what he conceives to 
be the truth, but he is also under bonds to 
proclaim the truth in love. If he struts 
like a rooster and exalts himself like a 
braggart he may deceive the ignorant into 
thinking that he is a defender of the faith, 
but all who have discerning eyes know that 
he has surrendered it. No man is doing 



The Shepherd's Temptations 167 

anything for the advancement of the re- 
ligion of Jesus whose heart is vindictive 
and bitter and who attacks alleged error 
by misrepresenting men who differ from 
him. Every generation brings forth a com- 
pany of stalwart champions who assume 
that they alone are the true custodians of 
the truth, and who by a blustering manner 
and a swaggering rhetoric induce the un- 
discerning to accept them as special agents 
of heaven. These high and mighty ones 
to whom the slaughtering of the heretics 
has been entrusted are not really prophets, 
speakers for God, they speak for them- 
selves. It was when Elijah had a swollen 
head over his victory at Carmel that he 
conceived the idea that he alone in Israel 
had not bowed the knee to Baal. 

In the realm of parish administration 
a puffed-up shepherd exhibits symptoms 
which have been often deplored. He re- 
sents all divergence from his opinions. Men 
who do not agree with him are set down 
as his foes. He treats them as traitors to 



168 The Minister as Shepherd 

the cause of truth. All who will not carry 
out his wishes have the mark of the beast. 
He is irritated by the least opposition. He 
is mortified by the failure of a single plan. 
Any independence of thought he considers 
a personal affront. If a household refuses 
to receive him, he calls down fire from 
heaven upon it. Strong in a clear con- 
science, he proceeds to break down oppo- 
sition by the force of his ingenuity. He 
schemes to get ahead of the insurgents by 
adroit management. He succeeds — but suc- 
cess can be bought at too heavy a price. 
The price is always too heavy when success 
is bought at the expense of the highest 
Christian spirit in the heart of the shep- 
herd. Many a minister has in the church 
meeting made a great triumph, only to dis- 
cover the next day that he was overthrown. 
A majority of votes were secured for his 
project, but that amounted to nothing be- 
cause of the number of hearts which were 
estranged. A minister may carry his meas- 
ure, and at the same time lose his cause. 



The Shepherd's Temptations 169 

What cannot be secured by sweet persua- 
sion had better be gone without. It is only 
a bully who tries to tyrannize or club peo- 
ple into advocating his projects, and the 
minister who attempts it is a man whose 
heart has been eaten out by the overween- 
ing love of power. It is a good thing for 
a minister to be defeated now and then in 
order to find out that he is not invincible, 
and that there are other people in the world 
besides himself. Victory is often only 
by way of the cross. A good shepherd 
ought not to shrink from an occasional 
crucifixion. 

A little Protestant despot, a petty paro- 
chial pope, is a sorry caricature of a min- 
ister of Jesus Christ. A minister who 
boasts under his breath that he proposes to 
run things and who chuckles at his adept- 
ness in manipulating people, and who says 
by his manner that he is the boss of the 
parish, is a man who is a stumbling-block 
in the way of Christian progress. If to 
the minister the people are only silly sheep, 



170 The Minister as Shepherd 

fit for nothing but to be shorn now and 
then, he is certain to put on airs and bring 
the Christian ministry into disrepute. He 
will scold in the prayer-meeting, play the 
part of a dictator on Sunday, move with a 
patronizing air among the poor and a su- 
percilious smirk among the rich, give or- 
ders in a loud voice to all the officials in 
the town, while wise men blush for his 
folly and the church mourns the loss of a 
leader who because he has not the spirit 
of Christ no longer belongs to the Master 
he ostentatiously professes to serve. 

The pastor is possessor of a power that 
is extraordinary and hence he must be ever- 
more on his guard against the temptation 
to play the lord. Peter in writing to the 
pastors in his day said : " Tend the flock 
of God, not as lording it over the charge 
allotted to you, but making yourselves en- 
samples to the flock." In other words — 
your power is not denied, no man can take 
it from you. It is given you by God him- 
self. Be careful how you use it. Do not 



The Shepherd's Temptations 171 

strut. Do not clothe yourself in pomp. 
Do not play the tyrant in your sacred robes. 
Exert your power in the ways that the Lord 
has appointed. Exercise dominion after 
the Lord's own fashion. Be a pattern man 
after which men can shape their lives. Be 
a model toward which the people can ever 
look. Be an example through which the 
power of Christ can reach and transform 
the hearts of men. This is the charge given 
by the leader of the Twelve, and he got his 
instructions from the Chief Shepherd. 

In the training of the Apostles there was 
no virtue so often extolled and insisted on 
as humility. The Twelve were intensely hu- 
man, and under the influence of Jesus' per- 
sonality and ideas, new ambitions awakened 
in them, and they began to dream of lofty 
places which they were going to fill in the 
coming kingdom. It is one of the mysteries 
of sin that men can have their minds filled 
with thoughts of self-abnegation and unself- 
ishness and at the same time be dreaming 
of preeminence and power. The men who 



172 The Minister as Shepherd 

were with Jesus at Caesarea Philippi and 
heard his words about the coming tragedy 
of the cross, began immediately to discuss 
the old, fascinating and tormenting question, 
which one of them was to be the greatest. 
They were not sinners above all others, we 
are men of like nature with them. We too 
can listen to the words of Jesus about hu- 
mility and self-renunciation, and repeat 
them to our people, and at the same time 
nurse in our hearts ambitions to climb and 
shine and dominate. 

There are certain passages in the gos- 
pels especially appropriate for ministers, 
paragraphs which ought to be read again 
and again in the inner chamber when the 
door is shut. One of them is the eigh- 
teenth chapter of Matthew's gospel, with 
its story of Jesus summoning the Twelve 
and taking a little child and setting him in 
their midst, and saying : " Except ye be 
converted, and become as little children, 
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of 
heaven. Whosoever, therefore, shall hum- 



The Shepherd's Temptations 173 

ble himself as this little child, the same is 
greatest in the kingdom of heaven. " The 
simplicity and unpretentiousness of an un- 
spoiled child is a revelation of what Christ 
expects in his ministers. A second classic 
passage is Matthew, the twenty-third chap- 
ter. " Be not ye called Rabbi : for one is 
your teacher and all ye are brethren. Call 
no man your father on the earth: for one 
is your father, even he who is in heaven. 
Neither be ye called masters: for one is 
your master, even the Christ. He that is 
greatest among you shall be your servant. 
Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be hum- 
bled: and whosoever shall humble himself 
shall be exalted." There is a danger lurk- 
ing in titles. The word which Rome se- 
lected for her priests has had much to do 
with perpetuating her error and riveting her 
power. It is not good for ministers to be 
called by their people " Father." It is not 
good for the ministers themselves. It as- 
sumes a dignity and prerogative in the 
minister which do not exist, and an imma- 



174 The Minister as Shepherd 

turity and dependence in the people which 
are not normal or wholesome. Ministers 
are not teachers in the sense in which Christ 
is a teacher. They are not masters in the 
way in which Christ is a Master. They 
are his representatives, but they do not take 
his place, nor possess his power. There is 
but one Lord, Jesus Christ, God's Son. A 
third chapter for pastors is the thirteenth 
chapter of the gospel of St. John. The 
tragedy in the upper chamber is one of the 
darkest in human history. The twelve men 
who have spent years in the close compan- 
ionship of the most unselfish man who ever 
lived, enjoying the illumination of his 
teaching and the cleansing power of his 
prayers, are still so petty and so selfish at 
the very end of their Master's life that they 
cannot sit down to partake of a farewell 
dinner without childish squabbling over the 
order of their places at the table. It was 
when their hearts were feverish and resent- 
ful that Jesus took the basin and the towel 
and proceeded to wash the disciples' feet. 



The Shepherd's Temptations 175 

After the work was completed he said: 
" Ye call me Teacher and Lord : and ye say 
well; for so I am. I have given you an 
example that you also should do as I have 
done to you. If ye know these things, 
blessed are ye if ye do them. " From the 
upper room Jesus went to the garden of 
Gethsemane, and from Gethsemane to the 
cross. It made men laugh to see a king 
crucified. They had never seen a king 
without a plume and without a crown. He 
was crucified, but King he was, and is, and 
shall be forever. From his cross he rules 
the world. 

In his hands he holds all souls. His 
claim upon no one of them has ever been 
relinquished. He is the shepherd, and all 
the sheep are his. The minister speaks of 
his church, his people, his parish — and this 
is proper if he understands the meaning of 
his words. As distinguished from one 
another, one parish belongs to one man, and 
another parish belongs to another man, but 
in the deep sense all parishes alike belong 



176 The Minister as Shepherd 

to Christ. The human shepherds come and 
go in a continuous procession. A minister 
arrives in town, unpacks his books, does 
his work, and then sleeps with his fathers. 
" He cometh up and is cut down like a 
flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and 
never continueth in one stay." But Jesus 
Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and 
forever. He is with his people even unto 
the end of the world. 

When Jesus handed over to Simon Peter 
the charge of the Christian church, he 
was careful to use the possessive pro- 
noun " my." " Feed my lambs ! Tend my 
sheep ! Feed my sheep ! " It is the might- 
iest pronoun in the New Testament for the 
saving of the minister from lordliness. 
" Simon, son of Jonas, feed my lambs. 
They are not yours, they are mine, but I 
wish you to look after them for a little 
while. Tend my sheep. They are not 
yours. I do not give them to you. They 
belong to me. Mine they always shall re- 
main, but I ask you to tend them for a sea- 



The Shepherd's Temptations 177 

son for me. Feed my sheep. They are not 
yours. Not one of them shall ever pass 
from my possession, but I am going away 
for a few days, and I leave them with you. 
Guard them, feed them, guide them, be 
good to them for my sake. Follow me. 
Remember my gentleness, my watchfulness, 
my considerateness, my patience, my com- 
passion, my readiness to help, my swiftness 
to heal, my gladness to sacrifice. Be the 
kind of shepherd to my lambs and my sheep 
that I have been to you. Follow me ! " 



V 

The Shepherd's Reward 

A certain school of ethics would ques- 
tion the wisdom of adding this subject to 
our list. " Virtue is its own reward," we 
are told, " and to inquire what one is going 
to get for doing his duty is vitiating. Work 
is better and the heart is nobler when one 
gives no thought to the recompense of his 
toil. We ought to do what we do with an 
eye single to the doing of it, with no de- 
mand for or anticipation of pay." It is a 
lofty-sounding philosophy, but it is too high- 
flown for healthy-minded mortals. It is 
an idol of the den. The New Testament 
knows nothing of the danger of looking 
to the end. Jesus never shrank from talk- 
ing about results. For the joy that was set 
before him he endured the cross, despising 
the shame. In the presence of his disciples 
178 






The Shepherd's Reward 179 

he prayed, " I glorified thee on the earth, 
and now, Father, glorify thou me." The 
prophet declared that the Messiah would 
see the travail of his soul and be satisfied. 

In all his teachings Jesus leaves no un- 
finished pictures. If he paints a sower 
sowing seed, he paints also the harvest 
growing golden in the sun. If he pictures 
wheat and tares, he also pictures the barn 
and the fire. If he sketches men working 
in a vineyard, he sketches them at evening 
time receiving, each man, his wages. When 
he portrays Dives at the banquet, he is care- 
ful to tell what Dives deserves and gets. 
He does not fail to inform us what is the 
ultimate fate of the men entrusted with the 
talents. He gives men reasons for doing 
well, and assures them that they are going 
to receive praise or condemnation accord- 
ing to their deeds. When Peter asked Jesus 
what he was going to receive by way of rec- 
ompense for the sacrifices he had made, 
Jesus did not rebuke him but assured him 
that " there is no man that hath left house, 



180 The Minister as Shepherd 

or brethren, or sisters, or mother or father, 
or children, or lands, for my sake, and for 
the gospel's sake, but he shall receive a 
hundred fold now in this time, houses, and 
brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and 
children, and lands, with persecutions, and 
in the world to come eternal life/' What 
does this mean but that the ministers of 
Christ are to be richly rewarded for their 
labors? They are to receive the very best 
things in this world and still better things 
in the next. What is promised is in every 
generation beautifully fulfilled. 

A minister who does his work with an 
eye single to God's glory, leaving everything 
else behind, receives the best things the 
world affords. A multitude of people be- 
come his relatives and friends. Fathers and 
mothers are as proud of him as though he 
were a member of their family. Old men 
look down on him lovingly as on a son. 
Young men look up to him reverently as to 
a father. Men of his own age love him as 
a brother. A large circle feel that in him 



The Shepherd' $ Reward 181 

they have a comrade and a friend. He 
enjoys free access to many homes. Houses 
and lands are his, not by legal title but by 
spiritual prescription. Appreciation, grati- 
tude, affection, these are the gold, frankin- 
cense, and myrrh constantly poured out be- 
fore him. If love is the best thing in the 
world, then the faithful pastor gets more of 
earth's richest treasure than any other man. 
To be sure, he will not be loved by every- 
body. Jesus was careful to state that the 
good things would be accompanied by 
tribulations. These also are a part of the 
minister's reward. The Pharisees and Sad- 
ducees and Scribes will always be against 
him. Men not bad at heart but of stupid 
ear will misunderstand him and misrepre- 
sent him. The idler will gossip about him 
and the ungrateful will return evil for good. 
Those possessed of demons will openly at- 
tack him. All this is to be expected. Is 
the pupil to be above his teacher, and the 
servant above his master? Think it not 
strange, young men, when this fiery ex- 



182 The Minister as Shepherd 

perience overtakes you. Do not be thrown 
into panic because all men do not speak well 
of you. Do not cry and sob when you meet 
with opposition in your parish. Do your 
duty and you will stir up trouble, but you 
will never be left without faithful hearts 
to love you. When you go into Geth- 
semane, friends will remain praying at the 
gate, and if you die on the cross you will 
carry into heaven with you the affection- 
ate devotion of many loyal hearts. There 
is nothing more beautiful on this earth than 
the love of a parish for a faithful pastor. 
There are ministers now alive who feel 
that it would be worth while to toil a thou- 
sand years to win such love as they have re- 
ceived. The taunts of Pharisees and the 
gibes of the chief rulers and the priests are 
all forgotten by the man who has the affec- 
tion of a multitude of friends. The petty 
criticism to which every man in public place 
is of necessity subjected, counts for noth- 
ing in the long sweep of the years. All 
the hateful and stinging things which are 



The Shepherd's Reward 183 

said by spiteful critics are only a few dark, 
evanescent bubbles borne on the bosom of a 
tide of love. When a pastor comes near 
the end of his career, he forgets all about 
the little gusts of bitterness which have now 
and then blown across his path, and says 
with the Psalmist : " Goodness and mercy 
have followed me all the days of my life." 
This love of the pastor is not only beau- 
tiful but lasting. It survives when many 
things else have perished. The affection 
for a pastor is different from the admira- 
tion for a preacher. The preacher, if elo- 
quent, gets brass bands and torchlight pro- 
cessions. He is given newspaper space and 
applauding crowds, but his fame is speedily 
forgotten. When his vocal chords fail the 
crowds disappear, and only here and there 
is a heart which feels the sense of be- 
reavement. Not so is it with the pastor. 
He lives in the hearts of those he has be- 
friended. There is no memory so long- 
lived as the memory of kindness. Great 
pulpit efforts are speedily forgotten, fa- 



184 The Minister as Shepherd 

mous books soon drop out of the public 
mind. Who cares to read a book of ser- 
mons or of theology published fifty years 
ago? Authors and orators live in book 
fame, whereas shepherds live in the hearts 
of those who were shepherded by them. A 
man's reputation for eloquence may live 
long in a community, but his reputation for 
goodness will live longer. When one lis- 
tens to aged people talking about the minis- 
ters of their youth, he hears remarks such 
as these : " I shall never forget how com- 
fortingly he spoke at my mother's funeral. " 
" I often think how he put heart into me 
at a time when I did not care to live any 
longer." " I can feel now the touch of his 
hand on my head when I was yet a mere 
lad." " I love to remember how kind he 
was to the poor, and how self-sacrificing he 
was in the time of the great epidemic." 
These are the memories which live. The 
sons of thunder have tongues which fill the 
world for a fleeting season with silver 
music, but the James whom the early 



The Shepherd's Reward 185 

church remembered was the James who was 
the first to lay down his life for the Mas- 
ter ; and the John who lived longest in Asia 
Minor was not the theologian or the orator, 
but the shepherd who wandered off in 
search of a convert who had become a 
brigand, refusing to cease his importunate 
appeals until he had brought the wandering 
sheep back to the fold. When Phillips 
Brooks died, the world lost a prince of 
preachers, but in the weeks immediately 
succeeding his death, it was not stories of 
his eloquence which were repeated most 
frequently up and down the Boston streets, 
but stories of his pastoral faithfulness and 
instances of his kindness in the homes of 
the poor. What is it in the lives of our 
parents that we remember best? It is 
not the theories they advocated, the wise 
speeches they delivered, the learned papers 
they read, but rather their unwearied pa- 
tience, their faithful kindness, and their self- 
effacing affection for us. These are the 
memories which linger in our hearts, and 



186 The Minister as Shepherd 

when we meditate upon them the heavens 
open and the angels of God come down. 

It is a commendable ambition to wish to 
live in the hearts of our fellows. The sur- 
est way of fulfilling that ambition is to do 
faithfully a shepherd's work. Many of us 
cannot be brilliant — we could have been 
had God so ordered — but we can every one 
be faithful. We can all be full of helpful- 
ness, we can all have it said of us as it was 
said of Barnabas, " He was a good man and 
full of the Holy Ghost." We can all de- 
serve to have chiseled on our tomb the sim- 
ple inscription which is to be seen on a 
solitary grave at the foot of the Apennines : 
" He was a good man and a good guide. " 

In addition to the love of human beings 
the pastor receives other satisfactions even 
higher and more blessed. He has the grati- 
fication of helping people, the peace of 
mind which comes at the end of work by 
which a heart has been soothed and bright- 
ened, the pleasure of taking men by the 
hand and lifting them out of the sloughs of 



The Shepherd's Reward 187 

despond, and sometimes out of the pit of 
despair. To him the joy is given of chang- 
ing the tone and temper of a home. He 
may enjoy the rapture of knowing that in 
the hands of God he has been instrumental 
in transforming the life of a community. 
These are rewards of a subtle and ethereal 
sort, coins paid out over the counters of 
heaven. They are indescribable and un- 
speakable forms of remuneration. The 
world cannot give them, nor can the world 
take them away. The satisfaction of hold- 
ing a great congregation attentive for an 
hour is not to be despised, but the satis- 
faction of knowing that by an act of yours 
one human life has been changed forever, 
is a satisfaction infinitely more precious. 
The gratification which comes at the end 
of a public work successfully achieved is 
sweet, but infinitely sweeter is the sense of 
having been able by the grace of Christ to 
turn one man's face toward God. The 
power of personal influence, the ability to 
pour one's life into another life, is one of 



188 The Minister as Shepherd 

the richest of all the gifts of heaven, and 
this is peculiarly the gift granted to the 
shepherd. By coming close to the individ- 
ual soul the shepherd communicates to that 
soul something of the essence of his own 
spirit, and from that time forward he lives 
not only in himself but also in another soul 
which by him has been transfigured. He 
is permitted by the goodness of God to 
kindle a fire on an altar that was cold, and 
re-create the world for a heart that had lost 
the joy of living. Through his patience and 
wisdom and fidelity men who have lived 
without hope and without God in the world 
are quickened into new life and begin to 
glorify their Father who is in heaven. This 
reward is richer than the first. It is a 
great thing to win love for oneself, but 
it is a greater thing to win love for God. 
The shepherd can do both. Men will love 
him as they love no other man in all the 
world because he has taught them how to 
love God. Things which eye saw not and 
which ear heard not and which entered not 



The Shepherd's Reward 189 

into the heart of man, but which were pre- 
pared for those who work for God, are re- 
vealed by the Eternal Spirit to the shepherd 
heart. The peace that passes understand- 
ing is a rich part of a shepherd's pay. 

But while the pastor may receive these 
rich interior rewards, does he not buy them 
at the price of pulpit efficiency? While he 
is winning the affection of sundry persons 
whom he has individually befriended, is he 
not likely to lose his grip on the crowd? 
Many a young minister goes into his first 
parish feeling that every hour devoted to 
pastoral work is lost time. He does such 
work grudgingly, assuming that it is done 
at the expense of pulpit power. The as- 
sumption is mistaken. No man can study 
all the time. A few hours a day with books 
will exhaust the most vigorous brain. One 
can get more out of books in a half day 
than in a whole day, provided he uses the 
other half day in a way to sharpen his appe- 
tite for fresh reading. Moreover, in pas- 
toral service a minister is at work on 



190 The Minister as Shepherd 

his sermon. Sermon preparation has two 
stages — work on the preacher and work on 
the message. The first is as important as 
the second. If the preacher is not prepared 
the message will be thin. The more thor- 
oughly cultivated the heart of the preacher, 
the finer will be the texture and flavor of 
the sermon. There is no preparation of the 
preacher comparable with that which he 
gets in mingling with people. A minister 
is as truly fitting himself to preach when 
engaged in pastoral labors as when in his 
study he has his dictionaries and encyclo- 
pedias and commentaries spread out be- 
fore him. 

But is not close contact with the people 
disillusioning, and thereby injurious to the 
preacher's enthusiasm? Does not distance 
lend enchantment to the view, and is not a 
more intimate knowledge of the pettinesses 
and meannesses of men apt to chill a speak- 
er's zeal and introduce a pessimistic note 
into his message? In this case is not a lit- 
tle knowledge a desirable thing, and a more 






The Shepherd's Reward 191 

extensive knowledge somewhat dangerous? 
These assumptions are all incorrect. It is 
when we touch men with our finger-tips 
that we dislike them. It is when we know 
them only a little that we are harshest in 
our judgments. When we come to know 
them better we discover many good things 
which we had missed at first. When we 
understand all which they have suffered, 
we make allowances for their shortcomings, 
and our heart goes out in sympathy instead 
of condemnation. Why, moreover, should 
a minister be estranged by the moral in- 
firmities of men? Why should he be galled 
by their ignorance, or disgusted by their 
foibles, or enraged by their prejudices, or 
soured by their vices? If humanity were 
morally sound, then were there no need of 
a physician. If men were what they ought 
to be, there would be no place for pastors. 
It is because men are in a state of ruin that 
Christ has sent his messengers throughout 
the world. If a minister finds himself 
growing cynical, let him drop his pen and 



192 The Minister as Shepherd 

associate still more closely with the people. 
The cure for pessimistic estimates of hu- 
man nature is not aloofness but closer con- 
tact. The most enthusiastic believer in 
human nature the world has ever had, was 
the man who got the closest to publicans 
and sinners, and who knew to the utter- 
most what is in man. 

But can one be a thinker and a worker, a 
man of thought and a man of action ? Can 
a minister be practical and retain the divine 
afflatus? Can he interest himself in mun- 
dane details and at the same time soar aloft 
into the heavens? Does not attention to 
parochial affairs cripple the wings of the 
imagination and paralyze the higher powers 
of the soul? Can a man talk lovingly of 
heaven with both his feet planted on the 
earth? The answer is, of course he can. 
Antaeus stood no chance at all with Hercu- 
les save when his feet touched the earth, 
and no preacher can grapple effectively 
with the herculean forces of this world un- 
less he stands flat-footed on the plane on 



The Shepherd's Reward 193 

which mortals live. The greatest of all 
poets, Shakespeare, had a practical, matter- 
of-fact mind. He could interest himself in 
prosaic matters in little Stratford as well 
as poetic matters on the London stage. His 
mind was wide enough to take in the tragic 
experiences of the heroes and heroines of 
human history as well as the common work 
and play of obscure men in English village 
life. It was because he looked so sympa- 
thetically on the plain humdrum life about 
him that he was able to create characters 
which will be the joy of the world forever. 
Some one may ask whether it is wise for 
a minister who wishes to become an author 
to give much time to ordinary pastoral du- 
ties. Why not ? Doing pastoral work does 
not fit every man to be an author, for God 
in his mercy has not ordained that every 
minister shall write a book. But if a min- 
ister is sent into this world to write a book, 
his pastoral work will only increase his 
talent. No man has a right to publish a 
book unless he has learned something which 



194 The Minister as Shepherd 

it is worth while for the world to know. 
How can he possess fresh and vitalizing 
knowledge unless he gets on the inside of 
men? Books that are made out of books 
are ordinarily stupid and worthless things. 
The best books are born in the brain of 
men who have established an original con- 
tact with the world. Christian history 
makes it clear that pastoral labor does not 
destroy the instinct or capacity for writ- 
ing. The most voluminous of all the Puri- 
tan writers was Richard Baxter, and he was 
the very prince of all the seventeenth cen- 
tury pastors. His best books were written 
in the years when his pastoral work was 
heaviest. Few books written in the nine- 
teenth century exerted a wider influence 
than John Keble's " Christian Year," and 
that was written by a village pastor im- 
mersed in pastoral cares. George Herbert 
composed the best of his poems when he 
was calling on the sick and poor. Charles 
Kingsley wrote some of his greatest vol- 
umes when his pastoral work was so tax- 



The Shepherd's Reward 195 

ing that it was necessary to rise at four or 
five in the morning in order to find oppor- 
tunity to use his pen. John Watson, who 
charmed the Old World and the New by the 
humor and pathos of his writings, was one 
of the most industrious of all the nine- 
teenth century pastors. The young minis- 
ter who, nursing literary ambitions, neg- 
lects his pastoral work, and shuts himself 
in his library " all dedicated to closeness 
and the bettering of his mind, ,, is not like- 
ly ever to write a book which the world 
will care to read. If a minister seeks first 
the kingdom of God, and does his full duty 
to his people day by day, then whatever 
books the Lord has need of will be added 
to that man. Pastoral work never dulls the 
pen which God desires to make use of. It 
was the hard-working pastor who carried 
on his heart the care of all the churches, 
and who warned every member of the 
church in Ephesus, night and day, with 
tears, who was permitted to write a quarter 
of the New Testament. 



196 The Minister as Shepherd 

But suppose one has an unsocial nature, 
and finds pastoral work a burden, shall he 
coddle himself and let the lambs and sheep 
suffer? No. If the minister is lacking in 
social gifts, let him cultivate the social side 
of his nature more assiduously. If a man 
has one shoulder higher than the other, the 
thing to do is not to grow more lopsided, 
but by systematic exercises to bring the 
lower shoulder up. If a man is timid and 
awkward in conversation, let him converse 
more frequently. If he likes subjects bet- 
ter than men, as Nathaniel Burton con- 
fessed that he did, let him cultivate men 
more and more. No effective preacher can 
be a hermit. When a preacher lives an 
isolated life, the note of solitariness reports 
itself in his sermons. An unsocial minister 
needs to be born again. Why preach the 
new birth when you do not believe it a 
possible experience for yourself? Why ex- 
tol the privilege of becoming a new man in 
Christ, if you persist in remaining the old 
man, making it impossible for God to work 



The Shepherd's Reward 197 

in you any mighty works because of your 
unbelief ? 

But can any man be a good preacher and 
a good pastor at the same time? Does not 
one gift kill the other? Does not the de- 
velopment of one capacity cause the at- 
rophy of the other? There are ministers 
who look with jealous eye on their pastoral 
instincts, fearing that these, if allowed to 
grow, will paralyze the tongue for preach- 
ing. A minister sometimes shrinks from 
being called a " good pastor," fearing that 
the compliment disparages him as a preach- 
er, and compromises him in the eyes of 
the public. Such men are deluded. Un- 
less the parish is too large, a minister can 
be good both as pastor and preacher. The 
better he is as a pastor, the more effective 
he will be, other things being equal, as a 
preacher. It is because men limp and 
crawl in pastoral work that they often 
stumble and fall in the pulpit. Because 
they desert the people through the week, 
God deserts them on Sunday. A man can- 



198 The Minister as Shepherd 

not be an ideal preacher unless he has a 
shepherd heart. 

Here then is a third reward which comes 
to shepherds, an increase of pulpit power. 
It is not claimed that every man who 
proves himself a faithful shepherd will be- 
come a famous pulpit orator. Pulpit ora- 
tors are few — possibly because they are not 
essential to the progress of the church, and 
too many of them would corrupt the world. 
All that is here said is that pastoral work 
does not snuff out the preaching instinct, 
and that every man is all the better preach- 
er because of the pastoral work he does, 
provided that this work is kept within 
proper limits. It may be profitable to note 
a few of the many services which pastoral 
work renders to the preacher. If some of 
you have high ambitions to conquer com- 
munities as sons of thunder, it will help 
you to escape the sin of doing pastoral 
work with a surly heart to remember what 
important and constant contributions pas- 
toral work is making to your sermons. You 



The Shepherd's Reward 199 

ought never to do pastoral work grudgingly 
or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful 
pastor, and so do the people. Baxter called 
the pastoral work " a sweet and acceptable 
employment.'* The labors of a shepherd 
were to him " not burdens but mercies and 
delights." No wonder God's work pros- 
pered in his hands. 

These are a few of the things which 
pastoral work does for the preacher. It 
supplies him with material for his sermons. 
A man who speaks every week to the same 
people year after year needs an enormous 
amount of material. It can be gotten out 
of the parish. The manna falls every day, 
and it falls near the minister's door. Fresh 
evidences of the malignity of sin are always 
being presented. Additional proofs of the 
presence and guidance of God are every 
day forthcoming. The best apology for the 
Christian religion cannot be gotten out of 
books, but must be framed out of material 
supplied by the people. The Sea of Galilee 
is in every parish, and Jesus walks along 



200 The Minister as Shepherd 

its shore, and talks with men and helps 
them as in the days of old. The minister 
ought to be there and listen to what the 
Lord is saying in the experiences of the 
people. It is there that one enters into the 
deep things of life. There are two kinds of 
profundities, book profundities and every- 
day profundities. What is matter? What 
is the relation of matter to spirit? What 
is the origin of evil ? How can the human 
will be free? What is a tenable definition 
of inspiration? These are the profundities 
of the books, but the profundities of 
everyday life are deeper. Love and 
hate, hope and fear, faith and doubt, sin 
and duty, forgiveness and remorse, de- 
pression and aspiration — into all these the 
man who would preach with moving power 
must enter. It is amazing how many in- 
teresting things are being said every day 
in every parish, and the preacher ought to 
hear as many of them as possible: orig- 
inal things said by little children, and wise 
sayings of aged men and saintly women. 



The Shepherd's Reward 201 

Hazlitt says, " You will hear more good 
things in one day on the top of a coach 
going to and coming from Oxford than in 
one year from all the residents of that 
learned seminary.' 5 That, of course, is ex- 
aggeration, but there is no doubt that good 
things are to be heard on top of a coach. 
It is in his parish that the preacher gets 
his most telling illustrations. It is proper 
at times to import illustrations just as we 
import pictures, diamonds, and many kinds 
of food, but the best illustrations of the 
preacher are those which are found at his 
door. Jesus of Nazareth never went out 
of little Palestine for symbols. It was the 
seed in the farmer's hands, the wild flower 
blooming at his feet, the old net lying on 
the shore, the experiences of men engaged 
in ordinary occupations, which furnished 
him pictures by means of which he ren- 
dered vivid the realities of the spiritual 
world. There come times to every minister 
when he feels that his material has run out. 
He has said all he cares to say, he has 



202 The Minister as Shepherd 

preached all he knows. The crock has been 
skimmed so often that no more cream will 
rise. The tree has been so often shaken 
that no more fruit will fall. Whenever 
these barren times arrive, let the minister 
lock up his study and go forth as a shep- 
herd. Let him walk through his parish, 
observing what is going on. Let him talk 
with the people who are bearing the bur- 
den in the heat of the day. He will find, 
perhaps, a business man driven almost to 
despair by some sudden reverse in fortune, 
or some woman who is grieving herself 
into atheism over the death of a child, or 
some young man who is just entering upon 
a path that leads down to death, or some 
young woman who is all perplexed in her 
first efforts to live a Christian life — and 
when he gets home he will be in possession 
of a message. When a preacher finds him- 
self with nothing to say it is because his 
heart is empty, and the thing to do is to go 
to the ocean of human need and fill it up 
again. A preacher always has something 
to say if he really knows his people. 



The Shepherd's Reward 203 

It is in pastoral work that the minister 
comes to know human nature. His parish 
is the human soul edited up to date. It is 
not enough to know what the world needs, 
one must know what it wants. Wants and 
needs aie not the same, and the preacher 
must know both. It is not sufficient to 
know the good things which are being said 
in the parish, one ought to know some of 
the foolish things also, the vices as well as 
the virtues, the errors as well as the truths. 
The weaknesses as well as the strong points 
of the people ought to be clearly appre- 
hended. It is only when the preacher is 
possessed of this knowledge that he can 
preach with greatest effect. No rifleman is 
likely to hit the target if he fires in the 
dark. How can a preacher aim a sermon 
if he does not know where the people are? 
It is as important that a minister should 
know his congregation as it is that he 
should know his Bible. How can he know 
his congregation unless he meets the people 
one by one ? Walter Scott made it a prac- 
tice always to talk with every man with 



204 The Minister as Shepherd 

whom he was casually thrown. He loved 
to talk to his servants and the servants of 
his friends — gardeners, coachmen, footmen, 
all sorts of men were interesting to him. 
A servant of his once declared that " Sir 
Walter speaks to every man as if he was 
his blood relation. " No wonder Scott be- 
came a wizard who charmed the hearts of 
millions. By coming close to the human 
heart, he understood its beat ; and when the 
Waverley novels appeared, men high and 
low felt in them the beating of a heart like 
their own. The minister who would be an 
effective preacher must speak to every man 
as if that man were his blood relation. 
Truth is to be applied — how can it be ap- 
plied to men in the dark? Knowledge is 
to be used — how can it be used wisely un- 
less one knows the people who are in need 
of it? Everything depends on the point of 
contact, and this is established in pastoral 
work. Matthew Arnold used to call Shelley 
" a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating 
in the void his luminous wings in vain." 



The Shepherd's Reward 205 

That is a correct description of many an 
aspiring preacher. He has beautiful senti- 
ments, but his message is ineffectual. He 
speaks with the tongue of an angel, but he 
beats in the church atmosphere his ser- 
monic wings in vain. The cause of the 
tragedy is his lack of contact with the 
world. He is not a shepherd acquainted 
with the ways of sheep. 

Even the form of the sermon can be 
constantly improved by fidelity in pastoral 
service. Much depends in preaching on 
the preacher's vocabulary. It must be made 
up of words which the people know. The 
words of the shop and the street and the 
home are the earthen vessels into which the 
heavenly treasure is to be poured. Men 
never understand the gospel unless it is 
preached to them in the language in which 
they were born. The temptation of the 
minister, if he be a lover of books, is to 
use the words of the scholars rather than 
the words of the people. Unless he watch 
himself, he will use words from the Greek 



206 The Minister as Shepherd 

or the Latin or the German or the French, 
when a plain English word would do his 
work better. Every opaque word subtracts 
from the preacher's power. A preacher's 
vocabulary ought to be subjected to the re- 
fining influence of ordinary conversation. 
It is in the suds of everyday speech that 
the starch of the schools must be washed 
out of the preacher's style. Style has a 
tendency to stiffen, and sentences, unless 
watched, have a fashion of becoming elab- 
orate and complex. If the preacher has 
fine literary taste he will be tempted to in- 
dulge in minute touches, in dainty allusions, 
in exquisite and intricate phrasings, and in 
all those delicate gradations of light and 
shade which are the delight of the excep- 
tional and fastidious and highly cultivated 
mind. Before he knows it his style will be 
a barrier between the people and his truth. 
The sheep will look toward those wonder- 
ful and beautiful sentences, but they will 
not be fed. Every preacher needs the dis- 
ciplinary castigation of conversation with 



The Shepherd's Reward 207 

common people. In conversation one is 
obliged to be sensible. He cannot put on a 
silly and artificial tone. If he did, others 
would laugh at him and he would probably 
laugh at himself. If certain preachers could 
hear their pulpit tones, they would be ex- 
ceedingly amused. When we converse, our 
words are simple and short, our sentences 
are straight and direct, our style is flexible, 
and hence conversation with plain people 
is one of the best schools for the cultivation 
of an effective pulpit style. The bane of 
the pulpit is complex sentences, artificial 
arrangement of clauses, and a style that is 
so elaborate that the attention flags in try- 
ing to extract the thought from it. All 
these are burnt up in the fire of conversa- 
tion. A sermon is defective if it sounds 
bookish. It is best when it is nearest friend- 
ly and unstudied talk. Daily intercourse 
with all sorts of people will do more to 
keep a minister ofif his pulpit stilts than 
anything else. Samuel Johnson at the age 
of thirty-five wrote the life of his friend. 



208 The Minister as Shepherd 

Savage in a style which by universal con- 
sent is abominable. Up to that time John- 
son had lived entirely with books, and his 
style was atrociously ponderous and arti- 
ficial. When he was seventy, he wrote the 
" Lives of the Poets " in a style immeas- 
urably superior to that of thirty-five years 
before, and the improvement was due large- 
ly to the fact that as Johnson grew older 
he gave himself more and more to con- 
versation with his friends. In conversa- 
tion much of his early pomp and monotony 
was sloughed off. The aim of the preacher 
is to move men, and he cannot move them 
with a style like a pair of tongs, long and 
stiff and hard. Style, to be effective, must 
be flexible and limp, clear and direct. In a 
word, it must be conversational. One does 
not want in the pulpit drawing-room famil- 
iarity, but he wants colloquial simplicity 
and ease. He wants also directness. Sen- 
tences must come straight to the individual 
heart. Wordsworth says that Dryden com- 
posed his poetry without his eye on the 



The Shepherd's Reward 209 

object. Wordsworth always kept his eye 
on the object. That is one reason why 
Dryden is unread and Wordsworth is just 
coming to his own. Preachers often preach 
with their eye off the people. This is evi- 
dent from their language. No man with 
his eye on the people could possibly go on 
using a style which is found in many pul- 
pits. Walter Bagehot gives ministers a dig 
when he says of Coleridge : " Like a 
Christian divine he did not regard persons. 
He went right on, not knowing what was 
going on in other people's minds." This is 
a defect which may be remedied by con- 
versing in the homes of the people. Per- 
sonal intercourse gives directness to thought 
and clearness to speech. In conversation 
style always particularizes, and language 
fits down snug round the individual mind. 
The preacher who is willing to let his peo- 
ple talk to him through the week will know 
better how to talk to them on Sunday. 

There are still more important things to 
be gotten from the people — originality, viv- 



210 The Minister as Shepherd 

idness, fire, and the ring of reality. A 
preacher is nothing if not interesting. An 
uninteresting sermon is a bore. It is not 
enough, as some imagine, that a sermon be 
true, it must be true and also interesting. 
What matters it whether it be true or not 
if people will not listen to it, and they cer- 
tainly will not listen to it unless it is in- 
teresting. A minister who cannot preach 
interesting sermons was never intended for 
the pulpit. The first duty of the preacher 
is to get the attention, and if he cannot get 
it he might as well go home. Now to be 
interesting a sermon must be original, vivid, 
and sincere. How can a preacher be orig- 
inal, dealing as he must with themes worn 
threadbare with the handling of two thou- 
sand years ? All the doctrines of the Chris- 
tian faith are commonplaces, and every 
Christian precept is familiar to everybody. 
How then can a sermon be original ? Orig- 
inality lies in the accent with which the 
sermon is spoken, in the fire in which the 
sermonic elements have been fused, in the 



The Shepherd's Reward 211 

application which the preacher makes of 
the truth to the people in that particular 
parish. A man to preach with originality 
must have first-hand knowledge of the 
things of which he speaks. He must look 
upon the world with his own eyes. He 
must know men at first hand. He must 
grapple with sin in his own heart and in 
the hearts of his people. He must know 
the joys and sorrows, the temptations and 
triumphs, of the Christian life. Every man 
is original who drinks at the fountains of 
the world's life and does not rely on the 
cisterns which we call books. The man 
who mingles with men, and plays with 
children, and who knows what is going on 
in his parish, will have a vitality and fresh- 
ness in his speech which will compel people 
to listen. His thoughts will have a peculiar 
edge, his message will be vivid. One can- 
not make a sermon vivid by picking out of 
the dictionary lurid and picturesque words. 
A vivid sermon comes out of a feeling 
heart. A heart that has heat can make dull 



212 The Minister as Shepherd 

words incandescent. How can a minister 
scorch cruelty and injustice unless he has 
seen them face to face in his own parish? 
How can he abhor the liquor traffic until 
he has worked with men whom the saloon 
has finally dragged down to hell? It is 
first-hand experience with sin which en- 
ables men to preach about it, and it is first- 
hand experience with Christ which makes 
it possible to tell the old, old story in 
phrases that etch themselves in fire upon 
the heart. Men who hold aloof from the 
everyday life and suffering of the world 
may pretend emotion and mimic passion, 
but their sermons lack the note of reality, 
and the congregation sits unmoved. A man 
to be a preacher must have an experien- 
cing nature. He must live over in himself 
the joys and sorrows through which his 
people pass. He must think with them, 
feel with them, suffer with them, rejoice 
with them — only so can the gospel come 
from his lips with power. " I preached 
what I felt," said John Bunyan. His ex- 



The Shepherd's Reward 213 

perience was the substance of his sermons. 
This gave them their life and power. No 
man really preaches anything but his ex- 
perience, that which has become incarnate 
in him, and hence it is impossible for any 
man to be a preacher of the first order un- 
less he bears men's sicknesses, and allows 
the tragedy of their life to be reacted in 
his own heart. A shepherd must know his 
sheep, and then his sheep will know him. 

Pastoral work delivers a minister from 
many errors and delusions. Robertson used 
to say, " It is visitation of the poor which 
more than anything else brings a man into 
contact with the actual and the real, and 
destroys fanciful dreams." The life of a 
minister exposes him to many distorting in- 
fluences, and he needs close contact with 
the world of working men and women to 
keep him sane and sweet. Two kinds of 
reading are to-day peculiarly misleading: 
the newspaper and the theological maga- 
zine. The former is gotten up in haste and 
contains a mass of material thrown to- 



214 The Minister as Shepherd 

gether by young men whose salary depends 
on their ability to make an interesting 
story. The average paper gives a picture 
of the world which is lurid, exaggerated, 
out of proportion, and in false perspective. 
The world is not half so bad or hopeless as 
the average paper would make it seem, and 
the minister needs to correct the newspaper 
picture by intimate contact with his parish. 
Some ministers are scandalously pessimistic 
in their preaching. In the paper one sees 
chiefly the bad, but in the parish one sees 
the good as well as the bad — so much of 
the good that one can thank God and take 
courage. The theological magazines and 
the books of biblical criticism deal with a 
group of problems of great interest to lim- 
ited circles. The minister who gives too 
much time to these problems is likely to put 
an exaggerated emphasis on their impor- 
tance. The latest theory of a daring Ger- 
man professor, the last speculation of a 
Dutch or French savant, looms large in the 
vision of the minister, and he burns, if a 



The Shepherd's Reward 215 

conservative, with holy zeal to demolish 
these new enemies of the faith ; or, if he be 
a radical, to communicate this new-found 
truth to his people. When the minister 
comes from the last theological magazine 
all aglow with enthusiasm over some new 
interpretation, or with indignation over 
some wild speculation, let him take a walk 
through his parish and note how indifferent 
men are to these theological storms. The 
foolish things in the magazines will never 
reach his people unless he tells them. The 
predicted collapse of time-honored doc- 
trines will never pain them if he keeps still. 
Plausible theories now dominant, but which 
will be antiquated ten years from now, will 
not disturb the souls of the faithful if he 
does not hurl thunder-bolts at them from 
the pulpit. When one sees a minister de- 
molishing a foreign critic of whom his peo- 
ple have never heard, and demonstrating 
the falsity of a theory of which his people 
have never dreamed, and laboriously striv- 
ing to clear away in a course of six ser- 



216 The Minister as Shepherd 

mons, stumbling-blocks over which his peo- 
ple have never stumbled, he has an illus- 
tration of how foolish a good man can be 
who reads the magazines more than he 
reads the lives of his people. Magazines 
and books have their place, but some min- 
isters are spoiled by them. They give more 
attention to a few bookworms in Europe 
than they give to the people whom God has 
entrusted to their keeping. 

A minister needs to cultivate his parish 
in order to extend the reach of his Sunday 
message. The preacher's work is one of 
persuasion. He cannot force or drive, he 
can only entice and woo. Success depends 
not only on the winsomeness of his mes- 
sage, but also on the attitude of his hear- 
ers. If his hearers are cold or suspicious 
or critical, he is not likely to persuade them, 
no matter what he says. If they are kindly 
disposed toward him, the door of their 
heart is open and his truth can easily get 
in. A preacher loses no time when he 
mingles with men in such a way as to give 



The Shepherd's Reward 217 

them confidence in him and to lead them to 
feel that he has a manly and brotherly 
heart. Building up in men a responsive 
disposition, creating in them a friendly and 
hospitable attitude, this is work which the 
minister as shepherd does, getting them 
ready for the message of the minister as 
prophet. The work of the prophet is to 
transmit, to convey a message to others. 
In the transfer of a truth from one man to 
another, two things are of supreme impor- 
tance. The first is that the preacher has a 
grip on it himself, and the second is that 
the hearer get a grip on it too. To be sure 
that the hearer gets a grip on the truth, it 
is necessary for the preacher to know the 
hearer's exact position. Treasures cannot 
be safely handed to men in the dark. The 
truth which the minister conveys is not to 
stop with the man who receives it, it is by 
him to be handed on. A preacher never 
reaches his highest success unless his peo- 
ple repeat his sermons. When they re- 
preach his message, his power is increased 



218 The Minister as Shepherd 

a hundredfold. Now people will repeat 
the sermon only of a man they like. They 
are not apt to love a man who does not 
love them, and if by his aloofness the min- 
ister shows that he does not care for the 
people, they will not be zealous in passing 
his sermons on. Lovers delight in repeat- 
ing the words of the one they love. It was 
a beautiful feature of Jewish worship that 
the high priest should wear upon his breast- 
plate four rows of precious stones, three 
stones in each row, each stone representing 
one of the tribes of Israel. In this way all 
the people were kept before the high 
priest in his public ministrations. The ideal 
preacher never goes into the pulpit without 
carrying all the people on his heart. A 
Russian saint has written suggestively of 
the practice of the presence of God. A 
second volume might be written on the 
practice of the presence of the people. For 
the preacher the one is no less important 
than the other. If he does not love to speak 
to his brethren whom he has seen, he is not 



The Shepherd's Reward 219 

fitted to speak of God whom he has not 
seen. 

The highest reward of the shepherd is 
an increase in spiritual stature. Character 
is the greatest of all treasures, and char- 
acter is built by action. It is the things 
which one does which determine what he 
is. " Character forms itself in the stream 
of the world." A minister's character is 
formed in the stream of parish life. It is 
the things w r hich he does rather than c he 
books which he reads which mold his 
temper and fashion his disposition. It is 
his work as a shepherd rather than his 
message as a prophet which has most to 
do with the enriching of his heart and the 
refining of his spirit. The reward of the 
shepherd is that he becomes increasingly 
like the good shepherd, he is transformed 
into the same image from glory to glory 
even as from the Lord the Spirit. The 
minister who watches and guards and 
guides men, heals and rescues and feeds 
them, develops by his work the virtues and 



220 The Minister as Shepherd 

graces of the Saviour himself. What saint 
is more beautiful in his old age than the 
man who for forty or fifty years has done 
faithfully the work of the shepherd? One 
star differs from another in glory, and so 
do the types of sainthood differ from one 
another. But for tenderness of heart, and 
beauty of soul, and Christlikeness of spirit, 
what character known among men sur- 
passes that of the shepherd saint? 

The shepherd life cultivates a sensitive- 
ness in all the nerves of feeling. The sym- 
pathies grow broad, the heart expands and 
takes in classes which were at first shut 
out. There is something in preaching 
which tends to make a man intolerant. One 
can be so loyal to what he thinks to be the 
truth as to become hard of heart toward 
those who will not receive it. Again and 
again in Christian history the sad spectacle 
has been presented of a man really en- 
trusted with a message from heaven, but 
whose fiery devotion to truth closed his 
heart against those who did not agree with 



The Shepherd's Reward 221 

him. The work of the shepherd ever tends 
to mellow and widen the heart. Working 
with the lambs, caring for the sick, rescu- 
ing the lost, feeding the hungry, all this 
adds new breadth to the sympathy and 
helps one to enter more completely into 
the lives of others. A shepherd whose life 
has been faithful is sure to be genial in his 
judgments and indulgent in the allowances 
which he makes for all classes of men. 
The shepherd grows in patience. As long 
as he lives, his work makes heavy demands 
on his powers of endurance, but they re- 
spond to the call. The work of a shepherd 
is full of interruptions, vexations, and dis- 
appointments, but these try his soul and 
refine it. The precipitate hastiness of the 
earlier years gives way to calm deliber- 
ativeness, and the feverish irritability of 
youth is replaced by the cool strength of 
forbearance. In working with human na- 
ture a man gets something of the patience 
of a mother. He is not daunted by a score 
of failures. He does not surrender to ap- 



222 The Minister as Shepherd 

parent defeat. If doing a thing nineteen 
times is not sufficient, he is willing to do it 
the twentieth time. The grace of humility 
is watered and unfolded by the shepherd's 
toil. The minister as preacher is tempted 
to be conceited. If his sermons are ex- 
traordinary his name is often in the papers. 
A minister as shepherd has no such tempta- 
tions. The crowds do not applaud him. 
His labors do not make good newspaper 
copy. The preacher is not often made con- 
scious of his failure. There is always room 
to hope that some one in the congregation 
is permanently helped. But the shepherd 
working with individuals, faces failure 
again and again. As a guide he is rejected, 
his counsel is despised. As a physician he 
is baffled, the diseases of the soul will not 
yield. As a savior he is defeated, he can- 
not bring back a sheep that is lost. There 
is always a joy in his heart over what he 
achieves, but there is also always a heavi- 
ness because of what he fails to do. " Sor- 
rowing yet always rejoicing " — this is a fit 



The Shepherd's Reward 223 

description of a shepherd's life. He is 
always being thrown back on God. While 
some men dream of a speedy ending of 
evils, and other men trust jauntily to ex- 
periments in legislation, he knows the 
power of sin and realizes that there is no 
help for the world this side of God. His 
experience in fighting evil face to face 
brings him into the dust. Moreover, his 
work is never done. The preacher can 
preach his sermon and feel that that task 
is ended. He can compute the number of 
discourses that are expected of him in a 
year, and can tell when that number has 
been written. To a shepherd's work there 
is no limit. After he has done a thousand 
things, he can think of a thousand other 
things still to do. After he has done his 
best, he feels like confessing himself an un- 
profitable servant. The shepherd's work 
is never done. 

The mystery of iniquity becomes more 
and more mysterious to one who works to 
rescue men from their sins, and a deepen- 



224 The Minister as Shepherd 

ing realization of its immeasurable power 
throws the shepherd back on God in Christ. 
Faith takes a deepening meaning. He un- 
derstands as few men do that it is neces- 
sary to walk by faith. He learns also why 
Paul calls hope a helmet, for he knows that 
without hope he cannot hold his head up in 
the battle. He comes to know as few men 
know the length and breadth and height 
and depth of Christian love. He reads as 
few men know how to read Paul's immortal 
words : " Love suffereth long and is kind ; 
love beareth all things, believeth all things, 
hopeth all things, endureth all things." 
There are many things which a faithful 
shepherd must endure, and when crucified 
he prays with Jesus : " Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do." 
The faithful shepherd comes to know the 
fellowship of Christ's sufferings, becoming 
conformable to his death. One may be a 
student and a scholar and write ponderous 
books of wisdom, and never once know the 
meaning of Gethsemane. One may work 



The Shepherd's Reward 225 

glowing ideas into golden speech, and thrill 
men's hearts with a tongue which has the 
wizardry of genius, and never understand 
the significance of the cross. But when 
one becomes a shepherd and gives his life 
to shepherding men, he begins at once to 
be baptized with the baptism that Jesus was 
baptized with and to drink the cup which 
Jesus drank. It is not until one comes out 
of the library and gets down beside some 
one who has fallen and is bleeding and half 
dead, that one becomes a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief. If to be Christ- 
like is the greatest of all privileges, then 
that privilege belongs preeminently to the 
shepherd. 

It is a reward that is offered to all shep- 
herds, no matter how large or how small 
may be their flock. There is no parish in 
any part of the world so small or so ob- 
scure that it does not furnish room for 
the growing of a shepherd saint. John 
Fletcher was pastor for twenty-five years 
in the little village of Madeley, and he grew 



226 The Minister as Shepherd 

there into a saint whose name will be 
fragrant forever. The brilliant Oxford 
scholar, John Keble, was for thirty years 
the pastor of the little village of Hursley, 
and in that quiet country town he grew to 
be so much like Jesus that many men de- 
clared him to be the saintliest man they had 
ever known. When God distributes his 
rewards he does not ask a minister concern- 
ing the size of his parish, but simply in re- 
gard to the spirit with which he has done 
his work. To every man who shepherds 
Christ's sheep is the privilege granted of 
growing into the likeness of the perfect 
shepherd. Large parishes spoil some men, 
but small parishes spoil others. High 
positions are dangerous, and so also are 
positions which are humble. A prominent 
church may make the minister conceited, 
but an obscure church may do the same 
thing. A man in a humble parish may be- 
come very conscious of the sacrifice he is 
making and talk about it often. Those who 
are very conscious of their sacrifice, and 



The Shepherd's Reward 227 

voluble about it, are not saints after the 
fashion of the Lord. There are men in 
high places who are vain, envious, and dis- 
contented, and there are men in low places 
in the same unhappy frame of mind. 
Wretched is the minister who is sour in 
spirit because his dream of advancement 
has not been fulfilled, and whose life is a 
long-drawn repining because he is not al- 
lowed to become the shepherd of a larger 
and finer flock. It is a consolation for all 
ministers great or small, that no matter 
where one may find himself, or how diffi- 
cult or obscure his field, the way is open to 
follow in the footsteps of the Good Shep- 
herd and to win at last the crown of glory. 
It was a faithful village pastor who wrote 
these words : 

Do the work that's nearest, 

Tho' its dull at whiles, 
Helping when we meet them 

Lame dogs over stiles; 
See in every hedgerow 

Marks of angel's feet, 
Epics in each pebble 

Underneath our feet." 



228 The Minister as Shepherd 

We have come at last to the crowning 
reward, everlasting fellowship with Jesus 
Christ and unending participation in his 
glory. Whatever the glory of the Chief 
Shepherd is, we who are under-shepherds 
are, if faithful, to share in it. His prayer 
was and is, " I will that where I am there 
they may be also, that they may behold my 
glory." What that glory is we know not 
now, but we shall know hereafter. Paul 
calls it a " crown of righteousness." Peter 
calls it a " crown of glory." Jesus calls it 
a "joy." The idea of sharing the life of 
Jesus Christ himself was the one which 
sustained Paul in all his tribulations. In 
the Roman prison he kept repeating to him- 
self phrases such as these: "If we died 
with him, we shall also live with him: if 
we endure, we shall also reign with him." 
This expectation was foundationed on the 
words of Jesus himself. To a company of 
drooping and doleful shepherds he said 
on the night of his betrayal : " I go to pre- 
pare a place for you, and if I go and pre- 



The Shepherd's Reward 229 

pare a place for you, I will come again and 
receive you unto myself, that where I am 
there ye may be also." John, exiled on the 
Isle of Patmos, looking out upon a storm- 
swept world, the scattered Christian con- 
gregations burning like candles in the gale, 
is not daunted by the present tragedy and 
disaster, but hears, above the crash and 
thunder of the tempest, a divine voice say- 
ing : " He that overcometh I will give to 
him to sit down with me in my throne, as 
I also overcame and sat down with my 
father in his throne." 



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whose sermons do not lose by being printed and read." — The 

Interior. 

Ylmo t cloth. $1.50 postpaid. 

THINGS FUNDAMENTAL 

"Certainly well worth the study of those who feel that the 
Bible is losinglground under the scrutiny of science." — The 
N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. 

12mo, cloth. $1.50 net; by mail, $1.65. 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS 

"In point of culture, breadth, and spiritual power, Dr. Jef- 
ferson's writings rank among the very highest." — Boston 
Herald. 

Ylmo, cloth. $1.50 net; by mail, $1.65. 

THE NEW CRUSADE 

This book is replete with "straight shots" and striking 
truths. 

Ylmo, cloth. $1.50 net; by mail, $1.65. 

MY FATHER'S BUSINESS 

Ten sermons for children, in Dr. Jefferson's best style. 
"A most valuable addition to religious literature for young 
people." — Providence News. 

Illustrated. Svo, cloth. $1.25 net; by mail, $1.37. 

FAITH AND LIFE 

"An illuminating glimpse of great subjects." — The Con- 
gregationalism 

Ylmo. 30 cents net; by mail, 35 cents. 

CHRISTMAS BUILDERS 

A beautiful book, tastefully designed and especially suit- 
able for a gift. 

With decorations and illustrations. Ylmo. 50 cents net; by 
mail, 56 cents. 

THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW 

A holiday booklet containing two timely addresses. 
Ylmo. 50 cents net; by mail, 56 cents. 

THE WORLD'S CHRISTMAS TREE 

"A beautiful idea, beautifully set forth." — The Living 

Church. 

Ylmo. 50 cents net; by mail, 56 cents. 



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